


Alienation

by Maldoror_Chant



Category: One Piece
Genre: (not all together though because that would be weird), But this is treated realistically so do not expect high schools or crushes or rock bands, CP9 - Freeform, Fish out of Water, Instead expect hospitals and police stations and violence and Sesame Street, M/M, Main character is dumped into 'our universe', Murder committed by main character, So morally compromised notion of justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-03-31 05:21:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 68,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13968192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: An accident during one of Blueno's Door-Door transports leaves Kaku stranded in a strange world full of unknown technology. His new home is overall a peaceful country in which a skilled infiltrator might eventually find a place.Kaku has dedicated his life and soul to the harsh Justice of the World Government. He already has a place. If he forgets that, he will truly be alienated.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's premise is guaranteed to make intelligent readers hit their browser's back button when spotted in the summary, because it is usually handled quite badly and also prone to Mary Sues. An OP character arrives on 'our planet' - Kaku in this instance, since congenial assassins are loaded with contradictions that get my inspiration raving. But I found a reason for the accident, for the existence of both worlds, and the fun of this fic was to handle the arrival as realistically as possible, which means that it won't involve My High School, a poorly masked SI romance, or a rock band; it will involve hospitals, police stations, a few moments of violence, and Sesame Street. As I said, realistic.
> 
> Note (since people inevitably ask): This is 'our world' but without the One Piece manga - this is not meta fiction.

Kaku didn't see the ground until it rushed up at him out of the darkness, and by then it was almost too late. A scant second wasn’t enough time to stop his fall and he crashed into the unyielding surface with an almighty thump. 

Seen from a distance, his belly flop into the dirt must have been amusing to watch. From the point of view of the agent who'd just gotten a full frontal bruise and the breath body-checked out of him, it wasn't nearly as funny. After a few agonized seconds and a wobbly inhale, Kaku concluded that no, he was not going to die. Instincts honed since he was a child had engaged Tekkai just in time and absorbed most of the impact. He had an achingly clear visual of what would have happened otherwise; it involved his body spread over twenty feet of ground like an exploded anatomy chart, and almost as flat. Oh man...He'd never understood the fear of falling before, but he was getting the picture now in glorious and nauseating technicolor. 

His stomach heaved, adding to the ache in his ribs, then subsided. Gravel scrunched beneath his fingers as he pushed himself up to his knees and wobbled there for a few seconds. 

"Blueno...?" His hand reached for his fallen cap of its own accord, fitting it over his bruised head after a couple of tries. "Hn...That was...Blueno? Blue-..." 

He was alone. There were no buildings around, no fortifications, no troops- and it was night. The picture was so wrong, Kaku felt like he was falling all over again. 

He stumbled to his feet, trying to piece together the sequence of events. There'd been an explosion and he'd caught his last glimpse of his teammate, his friend, outlined in a halo of fire and light. But surely, if Blueno had been-...incapacitated, then Kaku, who'd been in the Door Door Fruit space behind him at the time, well, surely he'd have...fallen out...

He'd certainly fallen. He just wasn't sure where.

Staggering around in a tight circle, he took in his surroundings. They told him absolutely nothing. Low hills, an overcast night sky, small trees and scrubs, including a runty, tattered little bush he'd flattened when he'd landed on it. No identifying features, he could be on any Fall or Spring island in the Grand Line or beyond. 

Kaku scratched his hair beneath his cap in an effort to massage his memory, ignoring the trickle of blood running down his forehead and dripping off his chin...The Marines had started the attack at dawn. The two agents, on loan from the government in return for the favor of a certain Buster Call, had gone in to take out the rebel leaders as soon as the fortifications were breached. Blueno had opened his door in the shimmering half-there space created by his powers, and stepped through into a darkened room adjacent to the enemy's command center. Kaku had been on his heels, ready to eliminate their target and anybody nearby.

Blueno had barked "Watch out!" and elbowed Kaku back hard, before reaching out to...yes, to close the door, he'd been closing the door when the air outside that rectangle of reality had turned into solid, punitive noise, a gigantic _whump_ of fire and light. Kaku could only remember a brief glimpse of Blueno's silhouette against that devouring golden-white blaze and then the bottom had, quite literally, dropped out from under him and he'd fallen like a hammer. He'd instinctively tried Geppou, only to find that physics were non-functional in that non-space between two of Blueno's doors. He'd fallen, totally helpless, for what might have been a minute, though it felt like a subjective hour when measured by the number of times his life had flashed before his eyes - and he regretted _nothing!_ Nothing but his loss to Roronoa and not having fallen in bed with Lucci a good deal sooner instead of wasting his whole seventeenth year fighting it for reasons that now seemed ludicrous- 

\- and then the quality of the darkness had abruptly changed, wind had whistled past his ears, the ground had come up out of nowhere and smacked him like a fly.

Now it was nighttime and he was not in the middle of a rebel fortress and there were no Marines around him, no Blueno in sight, and no indications of where he'd ended up.

Swell.

Blueno couldn't open doors much further than a hundred yards away. Kaku tried to keep this in mind as he turned around and around like a broken weathervane, well aware that what had happened back there had not been anything like Blueno's regular powers or his usual doors.

If it was night...then either he'd fallen for a loooong time, or else he'd somehow fallen clean through the planet and into a different time zone. 

Just swell.

At least I didn’t land in the ocean, Kaku told himself, trying to kick his usual practical outlook on life back into gear. Considering the proportion of sea to dry land in the Blues and the Grand Line, he could call his rough landing a miracle in itself and let that cheer him up. It failed to do that, but the thought did induce a certain amount of pulling himself together and focusing on the immediate problem.

He spent the next ten minutes circling his landing spot and launching upwards, using Geppou to walk through the air, exhausting his battered body searching the night sky for an invisible door that had, in all likelihood, already disappeared. As definitions of the word 'futile' went, that rated right up there, but he had to be sure.

Back on the ground and getting ready for his ninth attempt, Kaku's attention was snagged by a distant grumble, woosh and roar. It had come from the other side of a bluff rearing a hundred yards away to his left. He'd seen a flash of light out of the corner of his eye, too. Kaku stared at the dark shape of the bluff, trying to analyze what that sound had been and failing. The night sky was lighter in that direction, but it wasn't the sun rising; now that he was looking at it carefully instead of searching for invisible and probably non-existent doors, it looked more like distant city lights or several large bonfires just over the hill. 

He limped over, climbed the gravel incline of the bluff and hunkered down near the top. There was a road on the other side, bordered by a long line of lights marching off into the distance. Terribly bright illuminations like the searchlights on a prison tower. Now Kaku thought he knew what that noise had been, or at least he could fit it into some sort of context that made sense; it had sounded like those trikes some Logia users could power. Nobody around now, though. 

Kaku prudently descended the bluff and approached the road, which was immensely broad. An entire squad of Marines could march abreast down this thing, once they'd split to either side of the green space and barriers down the center. The lights buzzed and muttered above his head, an odd phenomenon, and the paving smelled like caulking tar. All these observations were automatic and inconsequential. What really mattered was that a road led somewhere, and that's where he was going to go. Somebody at the end of that road could tell him where he was and how he was going to get back to Enies Lobby. 

Picking the direction he thought the trike had taken, Kaku had walked a quarter of a mile, shoes rasping on the odd pavement, when a noise made him glance back. Twin beams of light were sweeping around a distant curve, heading towards him. Well, that might save him a long walk. He could hitch a ride with whoever was coming, assuming they didn't look outright like an enemy. Kaku turned to face the oncoming vehicle and waved.

The mistake was almost fatal, but understandable in hindsight. Kaku had seen trikes a couple of times previously, and steam-powered vehicles from other islands; he knew their top speeds. By the time his mind cottoned on to the fact that this thing heading towards him, blinding him with its lights, was going _faster than anything he'd ever seen_ -...it was almost too late again, but for his reflexes.

The large vehicle roared towards him, squealing like ten thousand stuck pigs and bellowing like a foghorn. Kaku leaped for the side of the road, and would have made it if the machine hadn't swerved away from a head-on collision at the same time, sending its tail end swinging towards him as it passed by. It caught him a glancing blow that sent him flying fifteen feet away, back over the metal barrier and into the roadside gravel with a thump.

I want this day to be over already, Kaku thought, staring up at the cloudy night sky. His head was spinning from the rush of movement, but this time, thanks to Tekkai and a little more advanced warning than his previous tumble, he wasn't injured, just really, really tired of getting tossed around.

He lifted his head at the cessation of earth-shattering noise. The...thing which wasn't a trike had stopped a hundred feet away, skewed sideways across the large road and almost into the ditch. It was as long and large as a barge, which is what it looked like; a barge on wheels, contents covered by huge tarps. Kaku mechanically gauged its weight and decided it was damn well impossible for anything that large to move so fast it would beat even Puffing Tom's top speeds, at which point he seriously considered the possibility that he was concussed and delirious, and this was all a figment of a seriously bruised brain.

The vehicle, grumbling and shaking with power, pulled up on the side of the road fifty yards away. The front part opened and someone got out, shouting. Another man came around the area blazing with harsh lights, shouting even louder. Kaku couldn't understand a word they were saying. They were looking around, and one jogged up the road, head swinging left and right until he spotted Kaku. He pointed and shouted some more. Kaku _still_ couldn’t understand a word they were saying. He reached up and poked at his ear in case it'd gotten itself accidentally filled with dirt, but no. The case for this all being a good dose of concussion was growing stronger. 

This would have been a good time for a strategic retreat to consider the situation from a well-picked hiding place, but Kaku didn't move. A distant hope kept him nailed to the spot; that he was going to wake up any minute now in a nice hospital bed with a nurse bringing him grapes - or, unfortunately more likely, with Lucci's foot prodding him and a suggestion that Kaku stop sandbagging and get up...So instead of getting the hell away, Kaku sat there like the allegorical duck until both men reached his landing site, gibbering what were obviously anxious questions at him. 

"...I'm sorry, do you speak Trade?" he asked.

Both men abruptly stopped talking and stared at him, then at each other. Then they started gabbing again, a little slower and louder. They looked as puzzled as he was.

"You don't speak Trade Lingo?" Where the hell had he ended up? Trade was the official or second language of every known civilized island, and most of the unknown ones as well. Kaku took another look at the huge trike and reminded himself that wherever he was, he was obviously far from home. The thought snapped him out of his daze. This island had highly developed technology he'd never even heard rumors of, they didn't speak Trade Lingo, and god only knew where they stood on the World Government political spectrum. Now was the time to shut up, go with the flow and figure things out like the infiltrator and assassin he was, keeping in mind all the while that most independent countries in the New World shot people like him out of hand.

The panic he generated when he tried to get to his feet induced him to sit down again, obeying the exaggerated 'don't move' gestures from the two men who had run him over (though they seemed a good deal more alarmed by the accident than he was, so chances were it hadn't been their intent to kill him). One of them started talking very fast into an object cradled in his palm. His body language indicated it was a den den mushi, though it was smaller than any Kaku had ever seen, and he couldn’t see the bug's mouth or hear what it was saying in return. Kaku took a third look at the gigantic trike and decided not to take anything for granted about technology here.

Other vehicles came bombing down the road all the while, allowing Kaku to judge their speed and feel a little less bad about not having dodged the one that had spilled him in the dirt. How could they move so fast, and would it be possible to dismantle one to find out...? 

Only two of the vehicles stopped; massive transporters, similar to the one that'd run him down. Their drivers gathered around Kaku, handing him coats until he was entirely covered by them, and speaking to him very slowly and loudly which somehow failed to facilitate his comprehension, fancy that. At one point a fight almost broke out between one man who was trying to get Kaku to his feet and another who was insisting Kaku stay seated. Kaku watched in bemusement, trying to fit their speech patterns into anything he might recognize. He was fluent in two languages other than Trade and had a grasp of others, but this didn't correspond to any.

Everybody relaxed when a vehicle with flashing lights stopped nearby. Two men, moving quickly in a professional manner, got out and made their way over to Kaku. He'd identified them as medics well before they reached him and started asking him incomprehensible questions, feeling him over and shining lights in his eyes. They looked puzzled and repeatedly quizzed the driver who'd knocked Kaku off the road and who was now standing over the agent as if he owned a proprietary interest in the proceedings. 

Kaku knew he was rapidly reaching a point of decision, even before one of the medics asked him something and then made a solicitous gesture indicating he should try to stand up. Unfortunately he had nowhere near enough information to make any kind of decision...

CP9 agents worked in teams, but they didn't really work together as such. Esprit de corps wasn’t what CP9 was about. Each agent could break off and act independently, the death or defeat of one would not stop the others from completing the mission. As such, they were remarkably individualistic for people who fought for the same uncompromising pursuit of justice. Each had learned to adapt their tactics on the fly to maximize their personal abilities.

So where Kalifa would have relied on her charms, Blueno would have 'Doored' away to regroup and Lucci would have killed the drivers who'd run him over before they could call for help and recapitulated what he knew about the situation while burying the bodies, Kaku did what he did best: he smiled wanly, as harmless as a wounded puppy, and made a show of painfully staggering to his feet. The plan was to go with the flow until he had more information. Even if they removed him from the scene, he'd already memorized the location where he'd landed in relation to the road. Though he probably could have saved himself the effort; Blueno's door was almost certainly closed, they never stayed open more than thirty seconds anyway. 

Staying here would accomplish nothing, while if he went with these men, he would find out where he was, get help, perhaps discreetly contact a World Government embassy and find someone with enough security clearance to have heard of CP9. And as a bonus he'd get to ride in that vehicle! Despite the overwhelming seriousness of his situation, Kaku was rather looking forward to that. Those things looked amazingly fast, like big metal bullets, and amazingly dangerous too without train tracks to guide them; an irresistible challenge. Of course, this wasn't the time to take silly risks, but he should be okay. His observations suggested that riding inside the vehicles was safe enough, or at least a hell of a lot safer than standing in front of them.

Disappointingly the medics made him lie down on a stretcher-like arrangement rather than let him stare out the front window. Kaku couldn't argue; he knew nothing of the situation, of the politics, of the possible risk to CP9 agents here or even the language, so acting dazed and obedient was his best strategy. Pity. 

A glimpse through the door the medic was closing rewarded his compliance. There'd been another vehicle with flashing lights fifty feet away, it must have pulled up while Kaku was being maneuvered onto the stretcher. The man who'd climbed out of it had not been a medic, Kaku would bet his right hand on it...Kaku made himself go limp on the stretcher and groaned piteously for good measure, and the driver of his own vehicle started driving instead of checking in with the newly arrived authorities.

The medic riding in the back with him pushed up Kaku's sleeve and attached wires to his forearm. Kaku observed him carefully, but nothing bad happened apart from a lot of bleeping in the machines that occupied large sections of the carriage. A green line jumped across a screen in time with his heart. He'd seen machines like that before, but not often. This ambulance-carriage was better equipped than many a hospital he knew of. It also seemed that electricity was in common use on this island, a rarity even on the Grand Line. Kaku craned his neck and looked around, but couldn't see the large batteries or turbines that his memory suggested were needed to generate a current. 

The medic looked surprised at the machine's readouts. He ran what Kaku gathered were more tests, while the roaring vehicle swerved and accelerated and let out piercing wails that nearly sent Kaku plowing his way out of there the first time it happened. The medic patted him on the shoulder and spoke reassuringly, unaware of how close he'd come to collecting a finger-sized stab wound somewhere on his person while an alarmed CP9 agent made a run for it.

The speed of the vehicle seemed to permeate everything. Kaku's mind struggled to catch up with the swaying jarring motions, the passage of bright lights as he was rushed out of the vehicle and moved onto another stretcher, rolling head first through corridor after corridor filled with things he couldn't comprehend.

Finally the two medics parked his rolling stretcher-bed in a small curtained enclosure. He heard them arguing with someone out of sight. Kaku craned forward, but couldn’t see them from that angle. Another rolling bed was visible around the half-drawn curtain to Kaku's left. The occupant was a positively ancient man who seemed ready to expire on the spot, breathing in gasps, toothless mouth open and drooling. 

The curtain to Kaku's right was pulled aside. The two medics were leaving - one of them waved at him over his shoulder - and a man in a cotton-candy pink overall spoke to him in a reassuring voice and words that meant absolutely nothing.

"I don’t speak your language," Kaku answered shortly. At this point, skilled infiltrator or not, he was feeling a little fed up. He was certainly glad that this appeared to be a hospital and not a holding cell for suspicious characters, but information overload was getting to him.

The man fell back on the tried and true tactic of speaking more slowly in his foreign tongue, and when that failed to do the trick, he went to fetch a dark-haired woman in blue overalls with a badge and a lot of keys hanging from a corkscrewed cord around her neck. She also spoke very slowly and repeatedly, and looked at Kaku with expectation each time she finished a sentence.

"Comprehension has failed to miraculously occur," Kaku informed her. Where the hell would one find an island which had never even heard of Trade Lingo?

She looked puzzled, shrugged in a way that indicated she gave up, and left. Pink Guy sighed, did a repeat performance of that same reassuring smile, and proceeded to try to take Kaku's clothes off, at which point the agent decided that enough was enough. 

Pink Guy was getting rather upset as his attempts to reach for Kaku's zipper were gently but firmly foiled. He stood back and spoke severely.

"I know I'm being terribly unhelpful, but I'm not letting you take my clothes. They're special clothes that stretch with my Zoan transformation, and I doubt that gown you're waving at me will be quite as obliging." Kaku let his head sink into his hands as he sat cross-legged on the rolling bed. He was getting a migraine. It might or might not be related to his earlier fall.

Pink Guy gestured a lot, but when Kaku failed to follow the mimed orders, or even respond, he started to look concerned. He checked Kaku's pupils and reflexes. Kaku allowed him to do that much, and even obligingly took off his shoes so that his new friend could see what happened when he ran a tongue depressor up his sole. Pink Guy then wired him up like he'd been in the transport vehicle. He seemed relieved but just as puzzled by the readings he was getting as the drivers beforehand. He jabbered what sounded like reassurances and exited the room at a trot. Kaku was left alone with the dying relic in the next bed. It was something of a relief. 

After a minute and Pink Guy's failure to reappear, the agent stirred. He detached the clamp stuck on his finger and the wires from his forearm. One of the vital sign recorders attached to his bed began to whine, until he thumped it and a connection jarred loose. Nobody came to investigate the noise, so Kaku got up and checked out the rest of the darkened room around the edges of the curtains. Pools of light illuminated four other beds, each occupied by old people, the exception being a fitfully sleeping woman in her forties. Kaku set about exploring his surroundings without disturbing his fellow patients. 

He bypassed incomprehensible machines and tempting wall cabinets full of half-glimpsed objects wrapped in colorful plastics, to go directly to the sink. His mouth felt like old boots, and the coating of dust and blood caked on his hands and face was getting irritating. The design of the faucet was familiar. The smell from the trickling liquid was familiar too, but totally out of place, causing him to immediately cut off the flow and stare at it suspiciously. Damn, that couldn't be water, could it? It smelled like the stuff the chore-boys used to cleaned the metal tables in the mess hall. 

When he turned the water back on again, the smell wasn't quite so overpowering, but there was no way he'd drink that unless he was dying of thirst and this was the only source of liquid available...which was rapidly looking like it might be the case if they kept him here for more than a few hours. Kaku forced himself to not think of deep wells and waterfalls, and quickly scouted out the rest of the room. He didn't know how long Pink Guy would take to return. He fetched up without much further delay in front of the far window, the only one that led outside as far as he could tell; all the others showed the corridors through which he'd been trundled. 

To his surprise, there appeared to be no way to open the pane. Damn. From the distance to the lights pinpointing the night outside, he was only two stories up. He could smash the glass and be gone before anyone responded, but that would hardly be discreet. That left the door. There were people walking up and down the hallway outside the long room. Kaku could bluff his way out, perhaps...Quite the challenge without being able to communicate-...whoops, someone was coming.

Footsteps sounded at the doorway hidden behind the row of screens. Soru got Kaku back into bed in a flash, rocking it a little on its locked wheels. Three seconds later, Pink Guy pulled back the curtain and gave him that reassuring smile again. The facial expression Kaku mustered in return felt fake and pathetic. It'd been a long day. Oh well, this was not a situation he'd be able to brazen out of, and showing weakness would lead Pink Guy to underestimate him and think his will was broken, giving Kaku a better chance of busting the hell out of this joint should the need present itself.

Pink Guy went to check the readings on the machines around the bed and seemed moderately surprised to find them all disconnected. Clamps and wires were reattached while he hectored his patient in the tone used for obstreperous five-year-olds who weren't taking their medicine. He jotted down some readings off the reconnected instruments, fiddling with the broken one until it started beeping again. The charts were dropped in a slot at the foot of the bed. Pink Guy repeated this performance for two of the other patients and then breezed out once more. 

Kaku sat there, listening to things go 'bleep'. Lucci would have buried the bodies by now and be figuring out how to work their vehicle. Kaku couldn’t decide, in that frame of reference, if his strategy had gotten him further or not.

Two women in pink walked in and removed the sleeping woman at the end of the row. She woke up with a groan of pain, and was reassured as she was whisked away. Nobody spared a glance in Kaku's direction. Stretching the monitor wires a bit, Kaku fished out the papers Pink Guy had scribbled on. He could make neither heads nor tails of the charts, other than the fact that, however he was doing, he wasn't getting any worse than when he'd arrived here, and none of his numbers were changing any. Except his percentage of manageable patience with the situation, but he didn't think they had a monitor to record that.

Just as he decided that he was going to simply walk out and woe to anyone who tried to stop him, approaching voices warned him to sit tight just a little while longer. 

Three people drew up to the foot of his bed: a woman in her thirties, dressed in pale green overalls and with Kalifa's decisive expression, Pink Guy again, and a dark-skinned man with a clipboard. It was the clipboard that worried Kaku. Clipboards meant paperwork, and paperwork spelled trouble for covert agents.

The conversation that followed went nowhere fast. The woman, with an impatient gesture, strode up to the side of the bed and removed Kaku's cap. Kaku quickly grabbed it back from her and clutched it protectively. He was quite fond of his cap. The doctor - she was too autocratic to be anything else - obviously didn't give a rat's ass about his cap. She checked his pupils with a flashlight, and then she spent some time scowling at a laceration in his scalp and the bump beneath it, an injury Kaku had picked up during his initial tumble, possibly the result of his all-too-intimate acquaintance with the bush. 

"I'm sorry, but I still don't understand a word you're saying," Kaku sighed when she asked him a question.

"Sorry," she parroted, as if that word had intrigued her. She tapped her chin with her stethoscope, then marched over to a box on the wall. Kaku watched her with interest as she used it to place a call (that's what she had to be doing, since nobody else seemed to wonder why she was talking to herself).

Pink Guy set about cleaning the cut and dried trickles of blood from Kaku's temple. The man's choice of clothing was dubious, and he kept giving Kaku's top suggestive tugs, repelled by a scowl, but once he got to work his hands were gentle and efficient. The stinging and bleeding soon stopped.

Yet another man walked in and greeted the doctor. Her questions prompted him to study Kaku with a doubtful look, and then he asked, "Do you understand-" something something, but Kaku didn't care about the garbled ending, he'd gotten the first three words and what a major breakthrough that was.

"Yes! Yes I do understand you! You speak Trade? Where am I, which island, am I still on the Grand Line?"

The man gaped at him and then fired off a series of questions himself, and at that point it became evident they still had a problem.

This new arrival looked to be a few years older than Kaku. He was dressed in a lab coat, a proper white one, another doctor no doubt. His features were fine and golden-toned, his eyes slanted. Kaku had seen similar faces on some islands. But his Trade Lingo was atrocious, heavily accented, rife with expressions from some unknown dialect, and unless he kept his sentences really, really simple, Kaku was lucky to grasp one word out of four. He also seemed persuaded that Kaku was speaking something he called 'nihon-go'; quite insistent on it. Kaku's words and questions seemed to leave him completely perplexed. 

"Slow. Slow." The man made 'whoa' gestures with his hand. "My name is Yoshio. Yoshio Odari. You?"

"Kaku," answered Kaku after a swift internal debate. Every physiological telltale sign Kaku could spot - Yoshio's pupils, his respiratory rate, the little flicker of a beat just visible in his neck, everything short of taking his wrist to feel his pulse - had registered absolutely no reaction to the term 'World Government' beyond flat incomprehension. What that meant on the bigger picture was yet to be determined, but at least the chances that he might have heard of Kaku or of that debacle on Water 7 were on the far side of remote.

Yoshio made a polite effort to not find the name ludicrous, though his brown eyes darted to Kaku's nose. "That's your _name_?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Last name?"

"No."

"...What? Last name?" 

Yoshio insisted a third time when Kaku just stared at him, which was getting downright rude even for a doctor. Or...were the customs here different? Kaku let his head sink into his hand, wondering how he was going to get this concept across when they were communicating like a couple of kindergarteners. "I'm a foundling. I don't have a last name. I'd tell you if I did," he said in a low voice. The day was really catching up to him. Maybe Lucci's way would have been better after all...Kaku had no problem with bloodshed of course, but it wasn't his first reflex. He was an infiltrator as well as an assassin, and this normally got him a little further than indiscriminate mayhem...

Yoshio spoke to the doctor. The note of alarm in his voice made Kaku look up in time to catch the doctor's sudden frown of concern. Yoshio asked him a tentative question. He had to repeat it, changing and simplifying the wording, and yeah, predictably enough Yoshio had completely misunderstood his explanation; he thought Kaku had a last name, but couldn't remember it.

...Now, that might be a solution to a lot of problems.

"No, I can't remember it. I can't remember anything. It's all a big blank," said Kaku, rubbing his head again and looking tired, lost and defeated. Not all that hard to do, at that. 

After a jabbering consultation with the doctor, Yoshio suggested that Kaku check his pockets. Kaku put on an expression of 'oh, what a great idea!' and rooted through his clothes, knowing full well that he had no wallet or papers on him, or any scrap of identifying material whatsoever that might link him or his body to Cipher Pol in the event of his capture. His swords, which he'd dropped when he'd started to fall, hadn't followed him through the door, and since a Rokushiki master did not bother to carry many weapons around when he was one himself, he could look the picture of all things innocent and harmless by turning out his pockets to show nothing more dangerous than lint. 

His lack of ID - as well as money, personal items or even a coat - caused surprise and consternation. From the questions and concerned looks he was now getting, the general consensus was that he might have been mugged, robbed and left for dead by the side of the road. An impression that was all in his favor and that he did nothing to dispel.

The doctor now started to talk in brisk, authoritative tones that reminded Kaku of Kalifa all over again, and Yoshio told the agent that he really did have to remove his clothes now; they needed to check his injuries. Behind Yoshio, Pink Guy was holding the papery gown, pants and a bathrobe, all with a vindicated expression.

"Can I keep them with me? They're all I have left," said Kaku with large puppy dog eyes which had gotten him any number of concessions before. 

Yoshio reassured him, so Kaku hopped off the table, badgered his stiffening arm muscles into movement and pulled off his top and shirt. 

Pink Guy whistled under his breath. Kaku pulled his head free of cloth, and found the man's gaze fixed on the scars decorating his chest, souvenirs bequeathed by one Roronoa Zoro. Pink Guy's examination ended in a cringe when he caught the doctor's glare, roasting him for what must be an unprofessional reaction. Yoshio was also staring at the wicked slices, appalled. Clipboard Guy glanced at Kaku once and went back to frowning over his paperwork in a way that reminded Kaku that money was going to be involved at some point, and that he had none. The doctor, meanwhile, seemed a lot more interested in the extensive bruising that was showing up over Kaku's body. She fired a question at Yoshio, who dutifully turned to Kaku to find the latter removing his pants. Yoshio seemed to lose his train of thought and jerked his head away to stare at one of the machines around the bed in a perturbed way until the doctor prodded him with her stethoscope. On the balance of probability, Yoshio wasn't a doctor after all; they tended to react to people's bodies the way a butcher reacted to a rack of ribs. 

The questions that eventually followed were no surprise. No, Kaku answered via Yoshio, he was not feeling nauseous; yes, he was sore; no, he could not remembered what happened; yes, he was sure; no, he did not know the year or where he was - Yoshio gave him a little information at that point, but Kaku did not recognize any of it, which no longer even surprised him, just depressed him some more. Goddamn it, Blueno, where the hell did you drop me, thought Kaku, rubbing his face in a show of pain and confusion which were only partly faked. 

The questions and more advanced examination of his reflexes were familiar. What followed was not. These people had a lot of machines. Yoshio, who seemed to have been roped in as official translator, tried to explain what they did and failed pitifully, but at least the procedures were painless. Kaku let them haul him around on the rolling bed like a good boy and do their incomprehensible things to him...until they tried to stuff him into what looked like the tube of a cannon, and then things very nearly got nasty. 

Yoshio got them around the difficulty without bloodshed, and maybe nobody had realized it but bloodshed had been well and truly imminent as Kaku's forbearance was frittered away by his lack of comprehension and control over events. He did not understand Yoshio's explanations, but it seemed the cannon was harmless, a diagnostic tool that would tell the doctors if his brain was bleeding. Kaku knew his brain was fine, but persuading them of this might mean the whole amnesia thing would be questioned, and that would bring back the man with the clipboard and questions of identity, last names and money. Damn.

Yoshio blinked as Kaku subjected him to a long, hard stare. Since the age of fifteen, Kaku's life had depended on his ability to judge people quickly and well. The language barrier was a problem, but he was ready to lay even odds that the doctor and Pink Guy didn't want to hurt him, and he'd wager his life that Yoshio wasn't the kind of person to voluntarily put a helpless man in harm's way or let others endanger him. 

"Fine," said Kaku, lying back down on the table and fitting his head into the contoured brace. 

Yoshio stayed with him during the procedure, as reassurance. The man was a bit of a study. The few times Kaku had been able to catch Yoshio's eye, he'd seen there the kind of concern that came without strings, without judgment or pity, a rarity. But it was walled up behind a reserve that bordered on entrenchment. Kaku's spot-judgment was that the man had had a hard time with some of his fellow human beings at some point...but that didn't really matter to the agent. What did matter was that beneath the occasionally curtailed words or closed-off looks, Yoshio was a fairly nice man, or more exactly, a _decent_ man, taking time off from whatever his job was to care for a perfect stranger just because he was the only one who could speak Kaku's language. If the situation had gone sour, he'd have been the first person Kaku would have grabbed as a human shield, but Yoshio was miles away from realizing this.

The night petered on outside the grimy windows which couldn’t be opened. Kaku was led to understand that his brain showed signs of concussion and swelling, but no bleeding. From the doctor's puzzled frown, this didn't match up to the clinical picture of a violent mugging followed by amnesia with a vehicle impact thrown in for good measure, but the language barrier made any questions more complex than 'where does it hurt?' and 'you _really_ don't remember anything?' impossible to handle. Kaku got shunted from one spot to another, left alone for stretches of time while everyone except for the patient Yoshio disappeared. Yoshio occasionally glanced at his watch, but behind his self-protective stance - arms crossed over his body, head down - there seemed to be some sympathy for Kaku's isolated, bereft state, and it kept Yoshio there, at his side. Kaku took advantage of this by getting as much information out of the man as he could, but most of it was incomprehensible. The only thing of value he determined was that due to his supposed amnesic condition and various other factors that Yoshio tried but failed to explain, all the procedures were free, at least for tonight and until they determined whether Kaku was at any risk of dropping dead or not. That was a good surprise, the only one so far.

His translator was eventually whisked away, summoned to another part of the building by the beeping of a palm-sized box at his belt. Pink Guy gave Kaku some ice cubes in a clear plastic glass. They smelled like old fridge and pool water. Kaku sucked on one to relieve his thirst and threw the rest away as soon as Pink Guy had vanished yet again. This hospital was a very busy place, and no wonder if the care was free. Kaku failed to understand how the place could operate at all.

He stared at the too-bright lights overhead for ten minutes and decided that now was the time to call it quits. The amnesia thing seemed to be holding up, he wasn't getting asked any pressing questions, but it wasn't getting him anywhere either. 

Pink Guy had considerately placed his clothes in a plastic bag beneath the rolling bed. Kaku got dressed, and then used Soru and his highly cultivated covert ops abilities to infiltrate his way _out_ of that bloody hospital. When put to the proof, their security was a joke. The back door he eventually found led him out onto a concrete apron full of vehicles. He walked to the edge to find himself on a promontory overlooking a large city stretched before him, visible only as thousands upon thousands of flickering lights, an amazing night sky in reverse. Beyond the lights, the darkness was striated in a way Kaku was very familiar with; the rippling whitehead-speckled spread of the ocean. Perfect. Sea meant port, port meant ship, ship meant ticket out of here, even if he had to stow away.

A couple of vehicles passed him in a whoosh of noise and light as he made his way down the ribbon of road winding away from the hospital. He ignored them, he should be safe enough as long as he stayed on the sidewalk. But one of them slowed and then screeched to a halt up ahead.

"Kaku?" Yoshio exclaimed, scrambling out the door. Kaku stopped, waiting to see what the other man would do.

Predictably enough, Yoshio's first efforts were to direct him back to the hospital. Kaku had been acting confused in the presence of the medical staff - not hard to do - but now he couldn't be bothered. With quiet determination, he got across the notion that he was going down to the harbor to catch a boat.

"To where?" Yoshio asked quite reasonably.

"I don't know," Kaku answered quite honestly in turn, "but I'm hoping that one of the destinations there will mean something to me. As for money...I'll figure something out."

Yoshio seemed to get the concept - they were starting to catch on to each other's accents and speech mannerisms in a limited way - but he was shaking his head. "They're closed."

"The port is closed?" Kaku carefully concealed his suspicion and disbelief in that statement, but he knew damn well that no country ever closed its ports, night or day. The sea was the lifeblood of the islands even on the capricious Grand Line.

"Yes, the ferries don't run until five."

Kaku thought the word was ferries; he wasn't sure. It occurred to him that Yoshio meant passenger ships, not freight and cargo, and it reassured him that his reading of the man's character wasn't badly off.

"Look, please go back to the hospital. I'm surprised they let you go," Yoshio added. So apparently Kaku's breakout hadn't been noticed yet. "They can-"

"No."

"But they- hey, wait!"

Kaku continued walking. Yoshio hurried to catch up with him, gabbling all the while. 

"I'm not cold," said Kaku, catching some of it. Yoshio had swapped his lab coat for a thick jacket, and he was still shivering in the raw wind. He must not have much muscle mass to boost his metabolism. Kaku could stand sub-freezing temperatures for several hours if he kept moving, and after that he could morph. Giraffes were hardly meant for snowy climates, but they were warm and fuzzy, which was what counted.

Yoshio finally caught his arm, though he released it instantly when Kaku stopped and looked around. 

"Okay, look- I can't believe they let you go. You don't know anything, you don't even know who you are or where your home is. Where are you going to go if you don't find anything at the port? Where- you can't just-" more babble, which ended with Yoshio rubbing his forehead in an unconscious imitation of Kaku's gesture of a few hours earlier.

The wind blowing in from the sea nudged them, stirring pieces of dirty paper and the skeleton of leaves in the gutter. It smelled like rain.

"...Do you..." Yoshio looked at Kaku briefly, hesitantly, before his eyes fixed themselves on the sidewalk once more. Kaku said nothing, waiting. "If you...if you want a place to sleep, I have a couch. It's not very good, but you can sleep there, and then I can drive you to the ferries later."

The attitude behind the offer was odd; reluctant and wary of Kaku's reaction to what should be seen by anybody as an extremely generous offer. Kaku put that and a few other clues together and figured out why his translator had been so agitated when Kaku had stripped earlier. Well, it didn't matter to him. Except inasmuch as it might prove to be useful, his inner infiltrator added. Yoshio was a precious resource. Nobody else so far had spoken Trade, and he was a nice guy behind the layer of defensiveness and diffuse anxieties, which made him easier to manipulate than a suspicious one. If his sexuality could eventually give Kaku a way of controlling him, it should be kept in mind. Kaku was certain, in view of Yoshio's behavior, that the offer of a place to sleep was perfectly straightforward, but he was also certain that it had in part come about because Yoshio had definitely noticed his body earlier, even if Yoshio himself wasn't quite aware of how this was influencing his offer.

"That's very generous of you. I accept with gratitude," Kaku answered with a small formal bow, which left Yoshio to stutter a response which to Kaku sounded customary but which Yoshio visibly had to drag up from deep within his memory and dust off before using. 

A small smile, the first Kaku had seen, crept onto Yoshio's face as he led Kaku back to the 'car', as he called it. "The way you speak is really old and strange. Your accent and your words...it's like I'm talking with my great-grandfather again."

"No, really?" said Kaku, who got that all the time.

 

Yoshio couldn’t tell him how a car worked, and seemed startled that Kaku should ask. Kaku was a little disappointed, but even if he'd gotten an explanation, or a full-blown schematic for that matter, he didn't have any more mental space to put it. He followed Yoshio like a zombie as his new friend ushered him through a darkened lobby, up some stairs and into a small, poky apartment. The couch was old, sunken in the middle and it looked like heaven in beige.

Yoshio showed him the bathroom, reassuringly familiar. But to Kaku's despair, whatever was wrong with the hospital water was wrong here as well. He managed to swallow some and it didn't burn his throat, so he supposed he'd be able to live with it. He wearily washed the final residues of caked dirt and blood off. Not all of it was his own, though fortunately nobody at the hospital had noticed that. He also rinsed out his tracksuit and hung it to dry. Yoshio had provided some soft slacks and a t-shirt, too small but wearable. 

When Kaku returned to the living room, it had become remarkably tidier than when he'd first arrived. Rumpled clothes, papers and a plate on the low table had vanished (so had Yoshio's keys and briefcase, presumably stashed in his own room, which at least proved the guy wasn't an idiot even if he was a little too nice for his own good). Yoshio, obviously not used to receiving guests, hunched over his hands stuffed into his pockets and muttered disparaging words about the apartment, the cramped quarters and the couch, until Kaku interrupted him with a smile and told him once more that he was eternally grateful. Yoshio looked both embarrassed and reassured.

Some books on a small desk drew Kaku's attention away from where Yoshio was putting down blankets and a pillow. He flipped through pages of dense text and illustrations of advanced medical diagrams. Yoshio had tried to explain what it was he did for a living in the car earlier. Kaku grasped that it had to do with medicine, machines and tests. Whatever it was he did, a hospital occasionally needed it done urgently, so Yoshio and his colleagues had to rotate on night shift to provide it, though most of the time they snoozed, read, did some research or played games on some sort of other machine which Yoshio was rather puzzled Kaku had never heard of.

Closing the book, Kaku glanced around to see if Yoshio had finished setting up the couch- and from the corner of his eye caught sight of something that looked almost familiar. 

His attention gravitated back to the desk. He hadn't...just seen that...

...It had to be a joke. Or...a novelty item...It... 

His hand shook as he reached towards the shelf above the desk, vision tunneling until the little plastic sphere was all he could see.

"Kaku?"

"What...is..."

"That? It's old, from my school days. It's a-" the word used meant nothing, but Yoshio took it from Kaku's hand, picked up a pencil and sharpened it with the base of the object in illustration. He glanced up and lost his benign look. "Hey, are you okay? You've gone very white."

Kaku pointed at the globe attached to the sharpener and croaked, "Where are we?"

The answer was a stream of near-nonsense syllables slowly drowning in a rising buzz. "Oh, this isn't accurate. It was made in China, and it bends the American continent a little funny. I think they tried to put the whole of BC in Alaska. But Vancouver would be about here, see? Or maybe here. On the coast, anyway, but it's too small- _Kaku_?!"

The feel of his knees hitting the rug was distant. Kaku bent over the raw fear in his belly, head bowed under the weight of a little blue and green ball of plastic showing him what his instincts were now insisting was true.

He was very, _very_ far from home...

Panic mutated into a grim determination, the core of who and what Kaku was behind the ideology, the masks and the traces of kindness and honor. Yes, it was true, he was lost and in one hell of a mess. But he was going to survive, he was going to defeat this trap and rise again. He'd dragged himself out of the burning Enies Lobby, he'd pushed himself to go on fighting despite near-fatal injuries, he'd thrived on the hardships of learning his trade, and his strength of will and tenacious belief in himself and his cause had shaped him into the killer and infiltrator his government needed for its own continued existence in the Age of Pirates. The will to survive was what gave him that fierce satisfaction in killing instead of being killed which underpinned both his ability to do his job and his joy in fighting. It was going to get him through this too. 

First things first. He stopped a panicking Yoshio from calling the medics all over again. Spun some yarn about how the day's events and the whole amnesia thing had suddenly caught up to him with a vengeance. Yoshio sympathized immediately, saying in his broken Trade that he didn't know how Kaku could be so strong in the face of having lost it all. Kaku did manage not to laugh hysterically at the aptness of the comment, but it was a close thing. 

Eventually he pretended to fall asleep on the couch, just so Yoshio would go off to bed after one last worried look his way. Kaku waited for ten minutes after the last squeak of bedsprings from the next room. Then he got up, moved soundlessly over to the desk and scrutinized the small globe with its alien landmasses and oceans, visible as pale and dark shapes in the yellow electric light spilling through the window from the street outside. Hell...He could barely wrap his head around it, but this was the only explanation that covered all the facts so far. As if in confirmation, he could see, in the lightening dawn sky, a slice of moon that had tumbled free of the clouds but had yet to fade or sink below the horizon. It was white and slim and way, way too small. Kaku looked at it until it disappeared, then he stared at the globe for a long time...then he picked up the pencil Yoshio had sharpened. He put it down and selected a pen, flicking the point in and out. 

Faucets. Lab coats. Bathrooms and stethoscopes and cigarette stubs in the gutter. If he was really on a different world altogether, why were so many objects familiar? 

Kaku turned slowly to stare at the bedroom door.

He listened for awhile to Yoshio's breathing, ear close to the wood, fingers barely brushing it. He had questions, questions he was burning, raging to ask...and a darkness in his mind, the shadow in which he, Lucci and the others walked the path of justice, duty and murder together- but Kaku caught himself sternly. That would serve no purpose. Yoshio would be a good deal less help to him if he was terrorized, and Kaku was too disciplined to take out his helplessness and fear on this man who'd befriended him. Yoshio was innocent of the horrible accident that had stranded Kaku here, and Kaku might sacrifice the innocent on the altar of justice, but he never, ever took such an act lightly or performed it for his own convenience. More importantly, Kaku the infiltrator added, finally rallying a little, Yoshio really was the most precious resource he had now. Because the man spoke Trade, or a crude facsimile thereof. And how could that be...? Had there been some form of contact between their worlds before? Could that contact be reestablished?

Those questions would have to wait. Kaku did not know how to ask them yet. His immediate task was survival. Then adaptation and integration. Eventually, he would go hunting for his answers. It might take years to get to that stage, but he was used to long-term missions, and that's what this was in a way: a mission. Granted, a mission lacking prep work, prior info, background, cover stories, fake IDs, clear-cut objectives and above all, someone on his side, a teammate whom Kaku was already starting to miss because even if Lucci wasn't always the easiest man to get along with, to say the least, Kaku did get along with him, and there was _nobody_ in this world or the next who would ever understand him so well...

Kaku buried his aching head in his forearm, pressed against the bedroom door. Okay. Okay, so probably not like a mission after all. But it was still survival. Kaku loved life, he loved it as fiercely as he meted out death, and he was not going to let this alien world destroy him. He'd survive, and one day, yes, one day he would find his way back home.


	2. Chapter 2

Yoshio knocked on the bedroom door to announce his arrival into his own living room. "Kaku? I'm coming in."

Kaku had heard him get up and get dressed. The medic had slept a total of five hours. Kaku hadn't slept at all. Once his head had stopped spinning last night, he'd silently and professionally tossed the room's contents, looking for anything that might help. For the most part he had found only further confusion. He'd limited his search to the living room and bathroom; it was unlikely the rest of the apartment would provide more, and for all he knew, the last closed door could be protected by some clever technologically-advanced burglar trap...He'd put everything back in its exact place, down to the many dust bunnies and a piece of old toast beneath the desk, then fallen onto the couch and stared at the ceiling as it got lighter and lighter and alien noises invaded the streets and building.

He pretended to wake up for his host's benefit; faked a yawn, returned a greeting, reassured Yoshio that he was still very much alive and not in any pain. It was all pretty much automatic, regular infiltration routine, until Yoshio mentioned food and suddenly Kaku was a whole lot more interested in what he had to say.

The kitchen was through the door Kaku had left alone last night; no boobytraps, just a small and extremely white kitchen which looked more like a hospital to Kaku's eyes than the hospital had last night. Yoshio headed towards the fridge- then made a clucking noise and detoured by the window. The apartment was on the second floor above an extra wing to the building. Sitting on the roof outside was a straggly grey cat. Yoshio fed it by dropping some pellets in a bowl on the sill. The cat waited until he'd stepped back a little from the window and then it set about cleaning out the bowl with haughty disdain that despised all attempts at kindness and domestication, particularly Yoshio's. So cats, too, were one thing that did not change from one world to the next.

Up until now, Yoshio had given Kaku an impression of reserve, not in the sense of shy, more in the sense of dug in and camouflaged. But as the man watched the cat stick its head in the bowl and munch away, his expression relaxed and opened for the first time since they'd met. For just a few seconds, until Yoshio remembered he wasn't alone. He said a few short dismissive words about the cat as he got breakfast ready, though Kaku didn't need an explanation, and had already slotted his observation into the bundle of reasons he'd been sheltered by this man. It seemed that, for all his retiring ways, Yoshio couldn't help but help a stray. That was good, and pushed back the eventuality that, to further keep his interpreter, Kaku might have to sleep with him. Not that Yoshio looked interested in any way either, apart from a flustered moment of awareness of how tightly Kaku's borrowed clothes had fit him last night, a moment which Kaku had strategically pretended not to notice.

Once the cat was fed, Kaku's new buddy proceeded to endear himself to the CP9 agent by procuring him from a bottle in the fridge a glass of water that didn't taste like cleaner fluid. While Yoshio was still apologizing for not having anything better to offer, the liquid had gone straight down, barely touching Kaku's throat in the process. Yoshio looked a little startled but also pleased, and poured him some more. It tasted flat, but compared to the stuff Kaku had swallowed until now, it was ambrosia. He had a third glass, then picked up his spoon expectantly, after a ritual 'Itadakimasu' which caused a brief reappearance of his host's small, bemused smile.

The soup Yoshio had warmed up had an unusual flavor with a faint metallic after-taste, but Kaku was too hungry to take notice of anything other than the fact it was edible. He swallowed a few more spoonfuls, and abruptly changed his mind about that. The food wasn't settling. He was starving, maybe that was the problem. He hadn't eaten in over eighteen hours if his count was right, and a Rokushiki user's metabolism was high-maintenance to begin with. He had a couple more cautious sips, then stopped and gripped his spoon, fighting a desire to throw up.

"You don't like it?" Yoshio asked worriedly. 

"Ah...it's good," Kaku lied. Besides the metallic taste, which must come from the can, the soup was salty and strong as if it had been boiled down too much. It also had a chemical tang that was making the agent's more paranoid instincts stir. But there was surely no reason for this man to poison him, his reading of Yoshio's character couldn't be that far off. "I must not be as hungry as I thought."

"You're not feeling sick, are you? Maybe we should go back to the hospital."

"No," Kaku said immediately, then amended that with, "No, I'm fine, thank you."

With Yoshio's anxious gaze on him, Kaku tried to eat some more. He didn't throw up, which was a minor victory in itself, but his stomach and the soup circled each other warily and refused to get along.

When he couldn't finish his bowl, Yoshio gave him a bar of compacted cereals; it looked like field rations, only sweeter and chewier. If anything it went down worse than the soup, Kaku's mouth tingling warningly after one bite. Kaku pretended to eat it and palmed the remains to dispose of later. Inwardly he was getting worried. He was in another world after all. Sure, things were similar, and he could - apparently - drink the water without ill effect, but he'd heard rumors of Grand Line islands where all the plants were toxic to travelers, while the natives had gotten habituated over the generations...What if-

"So what did they say at the hospital last night?" said Yoshio, effectively derailing Kaku's concerns and giving him a set of new ones.

"I have concussion," Kaku answered cautiously.

"Yes, I heard that part, but what about your memory? What are they going to do? Did they give you some medicine? Are you going to need-" Yoshio used some unknown term which, after a bit of rewording, turned out to be therapy. Kaku didn't know how that would help, but he wasn't a doctor.

"Um..."

"What did Gilcrhist tell you anyway? Do you have to go see her again? I can drive you if you want."

Damn it...

"I left," Kaku said, abruptly making up his mind.

"Yes, I know. I'm surprised they didn't keep you under observation. You look okay, but to let you go like that..."

"They didn't. I just left."

"Huh? I'm sorry, I didn't understand that, can you repeat-...you mean you _left_?! Without telling them?!"

"Yes."

"But- but you can't do that!"

"You said it was free," Kaku pointed out, trying to keep his neutral-amiable mask over his growing tension and nausea.

"What?! Yes, it is free I guess, though you need to fill out some- but that's not the point! You're sick, you need-" Yoshio dug his fingers through his hair and tugged, face scrunched up. "I have to take you back. They must be completely- oh man."

Kaku debated quickly. He could probably escape from any trouble he got into from what he'd seen so far of this world's security measures, and in the meantime it was imperative he try his best to stick with Yoshio.

"If you think I should go back, I will. Can we go see the harbor, first? I want to see if I remember any names." 

He knew now that he would not. There would be no ship here that could take him home, but this would give him a few more hours with his host, pumping him for information about this world, learning his idioms, and hopefully subtly ingratiating himself so that if push came to shove, his new friend would not sell him down the river, at least not without a moment's hesitation.

\--- 

Sound strategy. Kaku, gripping the handle inserted in the car door, was starting to regret it. There were a lot of people in this city, and most of them had cars and had decided to drive down to the ferry terminal with them at ridiculous speed. Kaku was a daredevil, but only when he had some control over events. In this instance, Yoshio was the one driving the vehicle, and he had not so far impressed Kaku with either his reflexes or survival instincts. After the second time Yoshio told him to relax and that he really wasn't driving all that fast, Kaku slapped on his neutral expression, geared up Tekkai and reminded the Fates of the Grand Line that they owed him solid for dumping him into this mess in the first place. Adding another accident on top of all that would be persecution of the worst kind, so they'd better preserve him, or else.

The Fates must have relented, or he was so far from the Grand Line he was outside of their influence, good or bad; either way, Kaku and Yoshio did eventually get to the ferries in one piece. Indeed, by the time they arrived Kaku had gotten somewhat used to the speed and number of cars on the road and was itching to get his hands on one...but that would have to wait until he had some idea of how they worked and what one should do with them. He had observed the mechanics of driving on the way over as a matter of course, memorizing each of Yoshio's gestures, and it didn't look as complicated as all the buttons and levers in the car had suggested, but he had a feeling it was probably more involved than turning the key, rotating the wheel and shoving at the speed lever.

The harbor boasted a multitude of boats, even though this was only a ferry terminal and marina. Large passenger ships and the industrial harbor were elsewhere, according to Yoshio. Boats docked in neatly arranged lines, small tugs chugged all over the place, sleek ships that looked very fast and interesting indeed bobbed at quay. Kaku's curiosity, a healthy part of his mental makeup, was urging him to explore, but unfortunately access to many zones was restricted to those who had tickets.

Cars simply drove straight right onto ferries as big as frigates which then chugged their way to nearby islands. Out in the bay, a cruise ship the size of a flag-bearing man-o-war sailed majestically out towards open sea. Kaku found it all fascinating and instructive, but it naturally failed to do anything for his non-existent amnesia. Yoshio, for all his reserve, was obviously disappointed on his behalf. He drove Kaku back through town 'the long way' to see if anything would trigger the agent's memory. The roads they used were narrower, but Yoshio drove more slowly and Kaku was getting quite blasé about the organized chaos of vehicles around them and was able to spare some attention to the city. He'd only seen it at night, or at speed down roads boarded on either side with large, glaring signs that kidnapped the eye with loud colors, aggressively smiling faces and huge words he was unable to read. As the car climbed an incline past a bridge, Kaku got a panoramic view of his new base of operations and whoa, was it ever a sight.

"What? What is it?" Yoshio asked, puzzled. 

Kaku craned his neck to get a better glimpse, face plastered to the car window. "Are those towers really made of glass?" 

Yoshio slowed the car along the side of the curb and tried to get a glimpse of what Kaku had spotted. "What? Made of what?"

"Glass. I can see clouds and other buildings reflected in them. There, over there."

Kaku cursed himself roundly as he was arrested mid-gesture, finger pointing at the dozens of buildings higher than the old Tower of Justice. Buildings which, from the expression he'd just caught on Yoshio's face, were nothing he should be surprised at. 

"I must have forgotten there were houses like that," he said quickly, playing the amnesia card again.

"...You don't remember ever seeing-" something.

"No?" Kaku said hopefully, while filing away the word Yoshio had used, 'skyscrapers', inside his growing lexicon of the language, alongside the definition 'ridiculously tall buildings made of glass with the defensive capabilities of dollhouses'.

"...Okay...Maybe you come from a place that doesn't have any? If you didn't see a lot of them before, it might look weird...?" Yoshio appeared to be honestly fishing for an explanation to cover for Kaku's boneheaded mistake. "Did any of the names on that map back there, or the ferry destinations, look familiar at all? Maybe you're from some of the small islands along the coast that only have low houses."

"Uh..."

"Come on, let's get you to the hospital, they can tell us."

"Right," Kaku said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

Yoshio was quiet as they drove on, visibly perplexed. Kaku looked out at the skyscrapers and practiced acting like he'd seen such a sight his entire life, because he'd need to behave that way towards everything from now on. He wondered if there were as many odd things in Japan, the country Yoshio and his parents had come from, and where they spoke the same offshoot of Trade. Where was Japan exactly, and would one of those cruise ships take him there? Kaku would have a better chance at survival in a land where everybody could at least grasp the basics of what he was saying.

Yoshio hit the brakes, making the restraining loop around Kaku's chest and waist tighten threateningly. Kaku had worn the thing four times now, at his host's insistence, and he still hated it.

"What's wrong?" he asked, trying to ease the belt away from his sternum. Yoshio drove a whole lot better and more staidly than the emergency vehicle driver, but that had been abrupt.

Yoshio babbled something, Kaku only caught half of it and didn't understand that. His new friend seemed animated all of a sudden. He swung the car into a new lane, causing someone behind them to hoot. Their vehicle hung a right, another right and then a third and fourth one which, unless physics here were as unreasonable as the buildings, had put them more or less back where they'd started.

Once he'd pulled the car up to the curb and ushered Kaku out, Yoshio led him into a store with more glass walls on the front; this world must not know the meaning of the word theft. A medley of smells replaced the bludgeoning assault of burning plastic, smoke and tar which had been with Kaku since he'd stepped onto that road last night. The new scents were familiar. Spices. Cardboard. Fridges. And the smell of food, which made his stomach do a slow roll and ache with hunger at the same time.

Yoshio stopped in front of a lunch counter that was almost identical to the one in the Enies Lobby lunchroom. The coincidence was so stupendous that it distracted Kaku from the wares that Yoshio was discussing at great lengths with the man behind the counter.

"Here, try this," Yoshio pressed him, directing Kaku and a plate full of food to one of the tables. 

"Thank you. I'm in your debt," Kaku mumbled. He didn't want to eat. The nausea had gotten so bad this morning he knew even Yoshio had seen through the fake smile and noted it. It'd taken an hour to subside, and Kaku was still feeling unwell and sluggish even though it was now early afternoon. He'd thought his highly trained metabolism could cope with anything...and maybe it was, working overtime to digest sustenance that would be downright poisonous if he were a little more normal. He looked down at his plate without enthusiasm, but forced himself to pick up the fork. He had to get used to it, otherwise he'd be finding out if the stray cat and the pigeons he'd seen were fit for human consumption. And if _those_ weren't, he'd be finding out how painful it was to starve in a land of plenty...

The only component of the dish he recognized was eggplant and tomato. Kaku stirred the contents around a bit, looking for anything else he knew, then took a resigned bite. It wasn't as salty or overly strong as the soup this morning. There were some tastes he wasn't used to, but no metallic taint and none of that odd prickly feeling - oh thank god, this was edible. Really truly edible. 

Yoshio chuckled when Kaku polished off his plate in less than a minute, and pushed his own dish at the agent. "Here, have mine, I'm not that hungry."

Kaku's gratitude was muffled but totally sincere.

Yoshio was nodding wisely when Kaku finally sat back with a tired sigh, feeling the - Harmless! And actually fairly good! - food do his body a world of good and shore up his optimism while it was at it. 

"You must have forgotten you were allergic to-" something something something.

"What?" 

"Allergic to- Do you know the word allergic? It means-"

"I know that one, but what was the rest?" 

With further words, a small technical discussion and eventually gestures, Yoshio got across that he thought Kaku had reacted to something in ordinary food, some substance they put in to preserve it. Kaku was familiar with the long-term conservation agent back home: it was called salt. Brine or smoke could also be used. Salting or smoking made the fish and meat tough and taste like crap, and some of it spoiled anyway, but you had enough to survive several weeks on board a ship even if the fridge broke down...and why Yoshio should have some chemical equivalent of that in his food when he lived in a city with plenty of shopping all around, and this place only fifteen minutes away from his home, was a mystery Kaku could not fathom.

"Yeah, I should probably eat food like this more often," Yoshio said, looking a little sheepishly at his now empty plate. "It'd be better for my health. It's a bit more expensive, though."

"Oh. That's right, I don’t have any money. I can't repay you." How much more expensive? What kind of source of income could an assassin from another world expect in this one, for that matter? Kaku didn't pay credence to Yoshio's hasty assurance that he didn't mind buying lunch. It was probably quite true; Kaku had noted, in the small portion of his mind that wasn't occupied with falling in love with his food, that Yoshio's perpetually defensive stance had relaxed a little when Kaku had started eating, a very faint echo of the pleasure and attention he'd shown the cat. Yoshio was indeed a thoroughly nice guy (or, as a CP9 agent would put it, a sucker). But he couldn’t be expected to stay nice for weeks on end. Even a saint's forbearance had its limits, and his wallet even more so.

"Do you know of any job I could do around here? I can haul crates at the docks, and I can fix ships-..." though maybe not the metal ones he'd seen this morning. None of them had had sails, they must run on steam, something he'd not had much experience with on Water 7. 

"Haul-...did you say, haul crates? Oh, but don't worry about that. Not now."

"But I don't have any money. Even if you're kind enough to-"

"Yes, but you'll get your memory back, right? Then you'll be okay." Yoshio nodded encouragingly. Kaku forced himself to answer in kind. "Come on, before we leave, let's go pick up some more food for tonight."

"I'm much obliged," said Kaku. So apparently he was staying with Yoshio for at least one more day, hmm? Fine by him. 

The restaurant was the off-shoot of a large store with an amazing variety of choices. Kaku's well-intentioned host picked produce from the shelf, boxes with loud colors and pictures and zooming letters, and then he'd ask Kaku if this was okay. Kaku picked up cues from Yoshio's body language and chose a few of the products without making any glaring mistakes, or so he hoped. And then it was time to go back to the hospital. 

Kaku had expected to be put back into a bed to wait for another hour, but Yoshio knew the ins and outs of the place and who to call, because it only took ten minutes for Dr Gilchrist to reappear, hopping mad, followed by the guy with the clipboard.

The doctor reexamined him, giving him an earful through Yoshio's embarrassed translation. Then she said something that made Yoshio clam up and give Kaku and the doctor reluctant looks. Clipboard Man put in his two cents, and Yoshio's face fell even further. Gilchrist rapped at him, pointing imperiously to Kaku. Translate, damn it! 

"Um..."

"Yes?" Kaku slipped his top back on and braced himself without making it obvious.

"She said...Doctor Gilchrist said...she wants me to tell you..."

"What did she say?"

Yoshio mumbled an answer. "The good news is, she says it's likely you can get your memory back...with therapy...and...counseling...that's talking with someone..." Yoshio's body language was all the way back to defensive, as if he expected to be caught at the center of an argument and would rather be far from here. "Um, do you know what counseling means?"

"I think I do, but how is that supposed to help?"

Yoshio ducked his head, letting the fine, black hair that fell over his forehead shadow his dark eyes. "She says that it is _possible_ , of course, that the blow you took to the head made you lose your memory, but you see, that's actually very rare. Total memory loss without a lot of damage and other symptoms is very, um, rare."

...Oops.

"She says it happens a lot in books, but in fact, most people do remember a lot of things, even with amnesia." Yoshio's eyes flickered towards his and veered away. 'They certainly remember what skyscrapers and cars and seatbelts are' was what was behind Yoshio's waver of confusion, Kaku's gut informed him smugly, before adding 'you blew it' in a voice reminiscent of Lucci's cool, unhurried murmur.

"I don’t understand," said Kaku, the picture of puzzlement. He didn't know amnesia was all that rare, he wasn't a doctor, and he certainly did not know much about this world, but there was one thing Kaku did know: how to lie convincingly. The first rule of the liar was, do not say more than you need to, and never give an excuse before they even call something into doubt. Only the guilty have explanations and alibis already prepared.

"She thinks...there's always a possibility you do have amnesia, of course, but-"

"What?! But I don't remember anything, if I don't have amnesia, how can I not- it's all a blank, why would it be if-" said Kaku, bewildered and barely coherent, as only a truly surprised and honest person would be.

"No, no, she knows you don't remember anything," Yoshio quickly assured him, to Kaku's genuine surprise this time.

"She doesn't? I mean, she does? What?"

There was a quick conference with the doctor, then Yoshio, looking even more embarrassed, said: "She thinks...it's not...it's maybe not your brain. She thinks it's your head."

"Aaa, Yoshio, I must not have understood what you just said, because it sounded like-"

"She thinks it's in your mind." 

Ah. That he did get.

"They think I'm imagining it?" Kaku asked, pretending to be affronted-

-though he knew exactly what Gilchrist thought now. The mind was a wonderfully devious piece of work that could fool its owner and rob him of memory and many other things under the right kind of pressure. It wasn't fake, it was just as real as actual physiological damage, and just as hard to work around. Both Kaku and Doctor Gilchrist knew this, though the good doctor would have learned this in medical school, while Kaku had learned it in Cell Block D under Enies Lobby, along with the knowledge that information extracted under torture was not all that reliable and that subtler means were usually preferable.

Yoshio elaborated in too-simple terms what Kaku had immediately guessed. In short, Gilchrist thought the trauma of being assaulted, robbed, left for dead to wander dazed in a no-man's land and nearly run over, had sent Kaku's mind fleeing from reality, helped along with a dose of concussion. The damage was more psychological than physical, though Gilchrist admitted it was possible it could be legit and due to a small bleed the 'cat scan' had missed. 

Either way, the possibility that he was faking hadn't seemed to cross anyone's mind at this point, so that was good. But now Gilchrist wanted to run a lot more tests. Grand. 

"There's something else," Yoshio added with a reluctant glance at Clipboard Man. Kaku had just known Clipboard Man would be involved at some point. "Mr. Adiba says...ah, you see, you were in a car accident, and then you lost your memory, and maybe you were even attacked, so of course they had to report it, it's just a formality- but it could be a good thing, 'cause they can find your identity and warn your family. I'll drive you, and I can translate for you if you want, I don’t have to be at work until ten tonight-"

"What? Who and where?" Kaku asked, trying to sound puzzled and harmless and amnesic rather than suddenly tense and suspicious.

"Oh, sorry. The police. Dr Gilchrist says the police need to talk to you. Do you know what that word means?" 

Yes, Kaku knew the word 'police'. 

 

\---

 

The islands of the Grand Line and the four Blues had as many different concepts of policing as they had differing governments: from the village sheriff to police states, from friendly, dedicated coppers to corrupt louts who made pirates look good. Kaku avoided them as a whole, the one notable exception being the night he'd spent getting beaten up in a basement of the Alerma Island PD while undercover as a bootlegger (like a true professional, he'd taken it without a word, except for the obligatory hollers the bastards expected, and had never gotten back to the ones responsible to avoid blowing his cover if he ever had to return that way one day). Unlike all the other Cipher Pol agencies, CP9 did not cooperate with local law enforcement. Hell, CP9 never cooperated with anybody, their existence a secret people died to protect, especially other people. 

Kaku was acquainted with the various flavors of local authorities because he spent a lot of time making sure they didn't look too closely into his activities and find the skeletons in the closet. Literally. In his experience, however different The Force was from one island to the next, there was always one constant, and it turned out to be true in this strange, new world as well: police stations were unfriendly. It was as if the architects had been specifically asked to design a building that would look cross and interrogative, a garrulous 'how have _you_ broken the law today?' in stone, bricks and cheap plaster. Yoshio hesitated on the steps, looking uncertain and indefinably guilty, which Kaku knew was not a sign of his host being a criminal but the building's intended effect.

Gilchrist had been given a business card by those who'd come to investigate Kaku shortly after he'd left; she'd given it to Yoshio. The thin slip of cardboard allowed them to skip the waiting room full of pimps, lawyers and other reprobates, and go directly to a long hallway with horrible plastic chairs where they were asked to make themselves comfortable, however unlikely that was. After ten minutes of waiting, someone came out to apologize for the delay and gave them tokens for a coffee machine down the hall. Yoshio went to get himself a cup. Kaku, due to his supposed allergies, was advised not to have any. The smell wafting from the contents of Yoshio's plastic container was that of coffee made with spoiled grounds and chemical sludge, so Kaku was rather glad to have been spared. 

Yoshio let the cup of coffee cool untasted on the armrest of his chair - a wise decision - and went back to picking at the cuff of his grey sweater where a tiny loop of the knit was getting fretted larger. That was the only thing he let slip; Yoshio had closed up more tightly than at any time Kaku had seen him up till now. His black eyes flickered up, hidden beneath his dark bangs, each time one of the frosted glass doors opened. He didn't answer Kaku's efforts to draw him out, except to mutter, out of the blue, "I have to warn you, these guys are, well, they can be narrow-minded. Just...don't get on their wrong side." He didn't elaborate further.

Kaku, by contrast, was the picture of calm innocence, though inwardly he was contemplating the coffee and thinking that if this was what these people did to their guests, he wasn't in any particular hurry to find out what they did to their prisoners. Torture must be routine here, and involve beverages.

Beneath the mask, his mind was composed, ranging over his slim deck of lies, ready to deal out the few cards he had and hope that was enough. Or...he could just tell them the truth. Hardly a CP9 agent's first instinct, but he could just go ahead and be honest. What was the worst they could they do to him, after all? Execute him as an illegal alien? Well, okay, they might do just that, though from what he'd seen so far, with their sweetly naïve approach to burglary and their unsuspecting doctors, these people were way too nice for that. Instead, they might decide this was an opportunity for cultural and scientific exchange. Did this world have Devil Fruit? Not that he had any with him, of course, but what he could show them about disrupting reality's wavelengths...And of course, there was always the possibility he'd already contemplated, that there had been a link between these two worlds before. If he told them the truth, they might think he was a lunatic, or they might remember similar cases and know how to remedy the situation, and at least he could stop lying and dump this ridiculous amnesia ploy. 

Yes, surely all he had to do was introduce himself properly, and the police would address him to the appropriate government agency who routinely dealt with these sort of trans-world accidents. They'd whip open a portal and drop him back at Enies Lobby, directly into the refectory of CP9's temporary HQ where he could get a decent cup of coffee. Then Lucci would give him a welcome home hug and Spandam would give him a raise, and all the pirates up and down the Grand Line would lay down their weapons and take up tuna fishing for a living, because if you're going to waste your time in pointless, stupid optimism, you might as well go for the prize.

No. Kaku was going to do what he did best, what he'd done nearly every day since he'd joined CP9 nine years ago. He was going to lie through his teeth. Assess the situation, fall back, observe, infiltrate and, if necessary, kill. 

Eventually, the business card that had led them there faithfully returned to its owner, a young police officer who probably had better things to do, but who was obviously intrigued by a real live case of amnesia. His name was Detective Anthony Shao (or Shao Anthony...Kaku was getting confused with the naming conventions here). His perfectly round face was set on 'courteously neutral', his almond-shaped eyes perceptive, and he didn't look anything like the layabouts Kaku had encountered in some government posts. This was not necessarily good news. Detective Shao looked efficient, and efficiency could trip Kaku up in many ways. 

Detective Shao was professional and polite; even Kaku, who could not understand the language, could tell that much. The detective put Yoshio at his ease in a matter of minutes, no small feat considering the medic's defensive tension up until now. Detective Shao took Kaku's fingerprints and picture - professionally and politely - and Kaku, who could also be professional and polite in much the same way, was relieved to know there was absolutely zero chance that this ever-so-nice detective would find him in the criminal files of this world, and he had the feeling Shao was going to look real hard. In a way, Kaku was rather happy to perceive the man's veiled skepticism. It meant this world worked a bit more like the one he was used to, free hospitals and glass walls notwithstanding.

Shao took down all the details, not that there were many of those, and after asking for permission, he checked Kaku's clothes for tags. Kaku was not sure what tags these were supposed to be, but Shao looked perplexed not to have found any, and ever so slightly more suspicious. 

Through Yoshio, he expressed some surprise that Kaku wasn't more injured by the collision with the large car - 'truck' - that had hit him the day before. Kaku had been ready for that, and explained that, thanks to the truck driver's reflexes, he'd been merely buffeted by the wash of air of a narrow miss. No, Kaku added through his interpreter, he had no intention of pressing charges. There was no cause, he'd wandered onto the road himself in a daze, and the truck hadn't actually injured him.

Shao's expression became a little more perplexed than suspicious. Kaku almost wished it were the other way around. Suspicion he might be able to handle. Fundamental questions about his existence would be harder to deal with.

A few minutes were then spent debating whether Kaku was in full possession of his faculties, other than his memory, and not a case of 'diminished responsibilities' due to brain damage. Diminished responsibility sounded like something rather nice to have, until Kaku figured out from Yoshio that this would mean he'd be either hospitalized or committed for his own safety and the safety of others, and then he put his foot down. Shao didn't seem surprised; Kaku's obvious grip on himself and the situation had in no way been lost in translation.

The detective's next question made Yoshio pause before he translated it.

"He wants to know where you're staying, and if you need access to some kind of shelter."

"Shelter?" Kaku asked carefully, still spooked by the mention of madhouses. 

"Yes. You know...they'll probably find out who you are in a few days...I know my couch is crap, but...Since you're recovering from injuries, I think you may prefer to stay with me rather than go to some homeless shelter or halfway house, though of course that's entirely up to you," Yoshio finished defensively, as if once more afraid his offer had crossed some invisible line. 

"That's very kind of you. If it's only for a few days, I'll gladly accept," Kaku answered. That should buy him more than 'a few days'. 

The detective wrapped it up quickly. Kaku caught him glancing at a pile of folders on his desk. He told Kaku via Yoshio that there had been no Missing Persons report filed for Kaku yet, but that this would probably happen in the next few days when his family and/or friends missed him. In the meantime he wished Kaku good luck with that therapy, Shao would call Mr. Odari's number and leave a message if anything turned up, and here was his card, Kaku should call him if he remembered anything etc. 

Kaku wondered, as he thanked Shao for his time via Yoshio's good services, if his friends and colleagues did miss him, or if they'd buried him and Blueno already and moved on as CP9 agents did...Since he was a practical man, he let that morose train of thought wind its way across his expression for Shao's benefit, and was rewarded by a look of sympathy in return, the first since he'd sat down before this desk. 

Shao hadn't said what would happen if no one came forward to claim him, but Kaku knew better than to ask. He was bound to find out sooner or later.

 

\---

 

"I think what surprised Shao the most - all of us, really - is that you speak Japanese," said Yoshio as he dished out some of the rice and casserole, whipped together from 'organic' ingredients that were supposed to not kill Kaku if things went as expected. "Though you speak a really strange dialect. Perhaps from some of the small islands far off of Hokkaido? Or maybe a Japanese community in a place like Taiwan...? But you don't speak English."

"Maybe I come from Japan."

Yoshio found the notion very funny for some reason. His unquestioned amusement told a gloomy Kaku that no, he would not get away with pretending he was from Japan.

"No, my theory is this: brain damage can be very specific, with some pretty odd results at times," Yoshio said, punctuating his statement with a jab of his chopsticks. "There are people who remember forgotten childhood songs after a stroke, but can't remember the names of friends they made less than a year ago. Maybe you learned Japanese when you were little, and your brain's now mixed up so you can only remember-...I'm so sorry, I shouldn't be talking about it like you're a- a-..."

"A medical case?" Kaku smiled easily (while inwardly wondering how he could capitalize on Yoshio's hypothesis, and if Gilchrist, and hence Shao and Clipboard Man, might be induced to share it). "I don't mind. I'm so lost, any idea's welcome."

"That's okay, your friends and family will come looking for you in a few days," said Yoshio in an attempt to reassure. 

Kaku's cheek muscles felt like they were about to ache as he hefted them up in an answering grin. "Right." 

Yoshio's positive expression dissolved into a yawn. "I'm sorry...do you mind if I got take a nap after dinner? I only had a few hours this morning, and I have to go to work at ten."

"I don't mind," Kaku said solemnly, without adding that this was Yoshio's own house, and Kaku was at best a charity case on par with the stray cat which was staring at them unblinkingly through the window.

Yoshio got up to feed the cat. "I'm afraid you'll be a bit bored. I don't have any books in Japanese. I probably should, if I want to keep it up, but-...maybe you can check for Japanese channels on TV."

"TV?" Kaku repeated as he polished off his dinner, cavalierly handling the short word that was about to give him an indispensable key to this new world.

Kaku had been just as concerned as Shao and Gilchrist about his inability to speak 'English'. Unfortunately Yoshio was the only person at hand who could teach him the language, and Kaku knew he had to use Yoshio sparingly; it would be easy to become a burden and lose the man's help entirely. Yoshio was providing him with food, shelter, a translation service and an entry-level cover story into this society. He shouldn't be used as a dictionary and English teacher as well. 

But TV was a machine. It didn't get tired, it didn't lose its patience and it spoke endlessly while providing handy pictures to illustrate its words. In short, it would last considerably longer than Kaku himself at this rate. 

Kaku rubbed his face for the fifth time in an hour, glanced blindly around the night-darkened apartment to rest his eyes, and then returned to staring at the pictures. He was tired, of course. He hadn't even had the benefit of Yoshio's few hours of sleep, and he was also recovering from minor injuries and major stress. But a CP9 agent could last a long time before collapsing, especially when there was much to gain by bullying his body onwards. Besides...the TV was sort of hypnotic. It put his mind in a state where only his eyes and his ability to analyze, pick out words and file them into memory was implicated, keeping him occupied while all the rest, the pressure of survival, the multitude of steps to take, the imponderables that might trip him up, the isolation, the alienation, all faded into the background a little. 

Of course most of it was gibberish to him. Indeed, some of the concepts he saw were so strange, so far out of his comprehension despite his status of Grand Line native and Devil Fruit user, that Kaku carefully shuttered them out of his thoughts for now and concentrated on the language; he didn't have the time or luxury to lose his marbles. He could still glean information this way. Particularly from the short skits that popped up regularly since they were simple, to the point, very frequently repeated and often focused around everyday objects (it was a little after midnight when he figured out they were meant to sell him something). With Kaku's dedication, intelligence and well-trained memory, his vocabulary was increasing exponentially, and the alphabet was familiar - another oddity Kaku decided not to contemplate right at the moment. His problem was sentence structure. He'd never learned a language this way before, and the lack of a primer was telling. Still, he would eventually crack it, he hoped.

It was five thirty in the morning when he hit the motherload. He was flipping through the channels. Yoshio had shown him how to use the slim, black control box before the medic left for work with the injunction to get some rest, an order Kaku was obviously ignoring. At first Kaku passed right over the sight of crappy puppets gesticulating on screen, but tired and dazed as he was, his brain still kicked in and said stop, go back a bit.

It was a kid's show, a whole series of kid's shows, and bless them, the people who'd made these puppets had decided to teach the little tykes essential survival skills, or so they were to beleaguered CP9 agents. Kaku watched, bringing more of his concentration to the fore, scrubbing his face with his hands and finally falling into an alert crouch before the screen. This show was not only giving him a grasp of basic grammar and vocabulary, it was even teaching him how to spell the words and pronounce them. He had to take advantage of this windfall.

"Wow, you're up early," said Yoshio as he walked in on a yawn. "Couldn't sleep?"

"I slept okay, I woke up just a few minutes ago," Kaku lied. He'd instinctively switched channels when he'd heard the key rattle in the lock. A covert operator's basic instinct: never reveal your sources of information. He was now watching the news. He'd stumbled across it last night and spent some time puzzling out the concept and figuring out why it looked different from the rest of the theatrical pieces, before figuring out that this was because it was reality. He really wished he could speak the language, especially as his eyes focused (after one or two attempts) on scenes of a steel ship with cannons mounted on it.

"I'm going to bed if you don't mind," said Yoshio, rubbing his eyes as he made his way to his bedroom. Kaku hastily assured him that no, he didn't mind. As soon as his host was gone, Kaku went back to his puppets, volume turned down. 

The stories moved on, a show for older children who already knew how to read and write. Kaku went back to following dialogue and picking out words where he could be certain of their meaning; it was easier than with regular adult fare. He'd made some progress already, and could now say with some confidence 'the dog eats the cookie'. Or 'the vacuum eats the blender', if he chose. He wouldn't be able to survive on that yet, but it'd come, it'd come...He switched off the box and pretended to doze when he heard Yoshio stir in the next room, eyes closed but still bright with imprinted light and all the colors of the rainbow.


	3. Chapter 3

"-and when you made rice for breakfast yesterday, for a moment I heard my mother telling me 'Come and eat'. In English, exactly like I just said it. It was very distinct. _And_ I could understand it. Go on, tell the doctor."

"I told her that over the phone already," Yoshio said, but Kaku's excitement was infectious (even if entirely fake), and it was cracking even Yoshio's reserve. He turned to the doctor, his translation hurried and once more ending in a question, a prompt for response.

"Interesting," said Doctor Gilchrist for the third time. Kaku knew that word; he'd heard it on the news quite a lot over the past five days and even had a fair idea how to conjugate it. But he still turned to Yoshio for a translation. His strategy was carefully planned out, inasmuch as he could plan anything when he couldn't do any research on amnesia or cerebral trauma. He was making it up as he went along, but Gilchrist didn't look suspicious. She looked like she knew where this might fit into a clinical picture, and also intrigued. Kaku suspected she was writing a fascinating article for a medical journal in her head, hence the strings-free consultation today in Gilchrist's office, with Clipboard Man nowhere in sight.

Gilchrist talked at length at that point, losing Kaku after the words "There is no doubt". Yoshio waited for her to finish, turned to Kaku with a private roll of his eyes and translated what turned out to be another soliloquy regarding the benefits of therapy. Gilchrist just couldn't wait to get her hands on him in a more official medical capacity. 

Kaku smiled at her and glanced at Yoshio. "Can you tell her something for me, please?"

"Sure." 

"Can you explain to her that I need to recover my memory and my identity - and my social insurance - before the hospital can provide me with therapy. But she's-"

"Oh, but-"

"-but she's telling me I need therapy first in order to recover my memory and identity...and thus afford therapy. Please tell her I'm convinced my amnesia is physiological, but if she wants me to go crazy too, she's on the right track."

"I can't translate that, she'll skin me," Yoshio said, lips twitching as he fought back a grin, and then he translated anyway and with a certain relish. 

 

 

"The problem is that you fall between the cracks," said Yoshio, avoiding an elderly lady with a tiny dog on a leash as he and Kaku ambled down the busy street. "If you were sick, or unable to fend for yourself, you'd be kept in the hospital and they could provide most of the tests and therapies under a requirement law, or else through charity organizations. You're healthy enough where we can't do that, but you don't have insurance, so we can't provide therapy on your healthcare. Mr. Adiba says there's ways around that, but without knowing your identity, it's very complicated. Chances are you'll have recovered who you are on your own by the time the paperwork comes through." 

Kaku nodded as though that all made perfect sense, though he still hadn't quite gotten the grasp of this 'healthcare' Yoshio had described to him at length. They were in a small area full of quaint shops, trying out a new supplier of organic food. Kaku had a bag swinging from his hand and a better idea of prices now, and this particular bundle of health and care hadn't come free, far from it. 

"Gilchrist mentioned that the reporter got in touch with her again today," Yoshio said with the air of one who knew his half-formulated suggestion was going to get shot down, and he wasn't disappointed. 

"No." 

Yoshio stared down at his shoes as he walked. "I don't like the idea either, you know, but...It's been almost a week since your accident, and Shao still hasn't found your family. He did say that the fastest way to get information would be to go to the press. Gilchrist told me that even regular full amnesia is rare enough to make a Human Interest story out of, and somebody who's lost his identity, like in the movies, it's extraordinary, it would make the international press-"

"And bring out all sorts of crazies to claim I'm their long-lost cousin, which I'll be unable to deny since I wouldn't be able to remember them anyway."

Yoshio might have missed the meaning of a word or two in there, but he got the point. "The police would check them, you know..."

"The police haven't helped me much so far."

"They're trying." Yoshio didn't sound all that convinced either. 

"I just don't like feeling helpless," Kaku said, a good excuse which just happened to be the truth as well. "Broadcasting my helplessness to the whole world...I just don't want to. I'm sorry, I know you're trying to help, and you probably want me to get my identity back and stop occupying your apartment-"

Yoshio's protests were quick and sincere. Kaku had joked last night that behind the veil of his amnesia, he might be a rich and eccentric millionaire who liked tracksuits and midnight rambles, and once his identity was re-established he'd be able to reward Yoshio for his acts of kindness. But even that suggestion left Yoshio looking a little sad behind the smile, despite the banter and the prospect of getting quite a lot of money. He was already getting attached to this particular stray, as much as to the stupid cat which was getting fed twice a day without even the cost of a petting. Since the chances of someone turning up with Kaku's identity, rich or poor, were absolutely nil, it was a good thing that Yoshio wasn't looking forward to getting rid of him anytime soon-...

Kaku's train of thought was derailed as he caught sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, down a pedestrian way. Men- no, kids- what were they doing?

"I was expecting the police to find your identity sooner, but apparently it's not that simple. Your picture and prints don't help if you've never been in their system. But Shao did say he'd extend the search nationwide and also to the border and beyond, so maybe that'll turn up something. Maybe your folks are in the US and are looking for you there-" Yoshio's voice was growing fainter. Kaku had taken a couple of steps down the alley to get a better look at the spectacle. 

It'd been silly to think this was some kind of formal training. The crooked, narrow street between buildings was no dojo, and the kids were practicing acrobatics rather than combat. But it looked fun. A faint nostalgia pushed him along with curiosity. 

"Kaku? Oh, there you are. What are you doing down here?"

"Look at that. What are they doing?" Kaku asked, stopping a few feet away from one of the young observers, who turned to look at him in surprise.

"Just fooling around. Come on, we don't want to bother them." 

Kaku continued to watch with no intention of bothering anybody. He'd been cloistered in Yoshio's apartment for days now, watching as much television as he could get away with, particularly when his friend was out working. His grasp of the language was evolving, more slowly now that he'd started to tackle harder concepts than simple grammar and vocabulary; too slowly for his taste. But today was the weekend when employees like Yoshio did not work unless they had shifts. This left Kaku unable to watch TV for hours at a stretch, which on the whole wasn't such a bad thing; a day without the little screen would probably do him good. And now that he was out and about, he was in no hurry to go back.

The kids were limber, though not up to martial form standards. Except for that one over there, who'd been putting up some kind of sham fight with a buddy, pretending to take a hit to the face and falling spectacularly backwards. He'd stopped now. He was staring at Kaku, as were an increasing number of them. They looked amused for the most part, though the overall atmosphere was standoffish. 

The attitude crystallized when one of the young men jumped into a handstand a couple of feet away from Kaku so the agent was staring at the white rubber soles of his shoes. Around him, kids snickered. 

"I think we should go now," said Yoshio, shifting nervously, but Kaku wasn't picking up any threat from the situation. Nobody was armed and there was only one living weapon present.

"Relax, it's just a game, right? Here, hold this please." 

"Huh?" Yoshio fumbled with the bag of groceries. "What are you- Kaku?!"

"Hmm?" Kaku twisted his head, but couldn't see his host from this angle. "It's okay, I know how to do this."

"You-...uh..."

Surprise turned to delighted laughter and derisive sniggers. Kaku moved his head away from the collar of the jacket Yoshio had lent him. The paving bricks of the well-kept pedestrian walk prickled his palms and fingers, but were smooth enough as his muscles flexed, holding him considerably stiller in his handstand than the boy's. "Now?" he asked calmly in English.

The boy fell back onto his feet, and there was a brief moment where his expression vacillated, possibly heading towards affront, but Kaku quickly stood back up and defused it with as friendly and harmless a smile as he could muster. The kid decided to take it well finally, laughed and got ready to take it one step further, but was shouldered aside by another young man. 

"Hey, mister-" the new challenger said with a grin, adding a few more unknown English words before falling straight down into a rather complicated move that seemed to involve a twisting handstand at one point.

Kaku hadn't followed all the steps so he couldn't replicate it on the fly, but he obligingly did something similar. There were whistles, and the mood was becoming competitive and jovial. 

"Kaku," Yoshio mumbled, "are you sure you should-" 

"Hey mister!" again. This time it was the senior of the group - all of eighteen - who took the stand. He had skates on with a single row of wheels. They handled as well as military-issue boots as he ran surefooted up some steps in the turn of the alley. He spun around with the grace of a dancer, shot off towards the handrail down the center of the stairs, rolled down them at good speed, launched off with a twist that sent him barreling skates first into a wall which he used as support to vault backwards and land on his feet. Kaku smiled indulgently, that was pretty impressive if the cub was self-taught. From the hoots, laughter and noises of appreciation, this was one of their smoother moves. 

Kaku nodded at the skates, indicating that he didn't have any. That he was even thinking of picking up the gauntlet earned him disbelieving stares, but one youth started to swing his own skates forwards by their laces. Kaku shook his head, though - he'd stick with his own boots, thank you very much - and took a stand near the stairs. A hushed, startled silence fell. Kaku didn't bother with the steps or handrail, as he would not be able to get speed up on that, not with conventional means anyway. He didn't need Soru's velocity for what he had in mind. His weight shifted as he ran at the wall. A leap and quick move gave him two footholds against the concrete, and a boost for a backward salto before landing in a crouch. That should at least be a contender, even without wheels.

In the short silence that followed, a bag of groceries hit the road's paving with a thud.

"How-...how did you-..." Yoshio's dazed eyes narrowed as Kaku walked back to his side. "Would you please remember you have _brain damage?_ "

"So?" Kaku answered, tone meek and apologetic; mustn't get on Yoshio's bad side. "As long as I don't fall on my head-"

"You _ran up a wall!_ "

"...Yes?"

"Ngh!" Yoshio rubbed his forehead, then, as an afterthought, picked up the groceries. "You scared me. Where on earth did you learn to do that?"

"I don't remember," said Kaku, faithful to his cover story. 

"But- but why did you-..." 

"I just...knew I could do it. Is it that strange? These kids can."

"They're- they-...yeah, it is kinda odd to do that for your information. Bloody unique." Yoshio rooted through the groceries and made a disgruntled sound when he saw a bruise on one of the apples.

Damn. He'd only meant it as entertainment, and perhaps a way of forging new connections with someone other than Yoshio, from a different stratum of society where Kaku could integrate a little more readily if need be. He might have overstepped himself thanks to his bloody habit of taking on any interesting challenge that came his way. His colleagues had always told him it'd get him into trouble one day. Still, it shouldn't be 'unique'. The kids had been doing acrobatics, their efforts at the level of any Galley-la worker worth his salt. Hell, these boys and the shipwright apprentices would get on like a house on fire even without a common language; they'd be doing stuff like this all day long unless Kaku or another foreman promised to whip their little hides if they didn't get some work done.

That was another world and another life, a fake one to boot, but Kaku still didn't understand what was so surprising about his actions. He'd seen people use something that approached Rokushiki on TV. The actors were terrible, their moves stiff, unrealistic and requiring props, but what they were imitating had to be at least known, if not common, so what was so surprising about a grown man knowing how to salto? 

Yoshio had been distracted by having to field umpteen questions from the kids, who by now had grasped that Kaku could not speak English. Kaku saw him shaking his head and embark into a grudging explanation in which Kaku picked out the words 'amnesia', 'no' and 'sorry, we have to go'. 

The kids might have let them leave once the first wave of interest faded, but by the time Yoshio finished his explanation, some adults had materialized, warned by one of the boys that something amusing was going down. Not that much older than the kids, they had the overconfident expression of men and women who'd been responsible for themselves for a few years already. Some were heavies, Kaku could tell from their demeanor, others were simply the kind who'd carved out a certain amount of ballsy freedom from living near the bottom strata of society. He knew their kind, and he knew how to relate to them. Refreshingly, the amnesia thing caused some interest and then was dismissed in favor of things physical. One of them knew a form of martial kicking art and soon he and Kaku were communicating through gestures and demonstration forms, while Yoshio made increasingly worried and exasperated medical noises in the background. 

His new acquaintance was named Judu, if Kaku caught that right. He reminded Kaku a little of Jyabura; his skin was as dark and sleek as the Zoan's pelt, but the similarities lay mainly in the in-your-face attitude and the automatic measuring and hints of friendliness that would follow if the result of the measure was acceptable. After half an hour of horsing around, Judu signaled he had to go soon, but he and two of his friends indicated they wanted Kaku to meet up with them again later that night. Judu had written the address on a piece of paper. He and his friends were gesturing, breaking off to press questions and requests for translation onto Yoshio, when the détente suddenly hit a snag.

The words were garbled, Kaku could only pick out individual terms, not meanings, so he didn't know what the question was, only that Yoshio suddenly flinched. 

"No," Yoshio answered in a measured voice that was as controlled and shuttered as Mariejoie's seawalls. 

Judu's friend held up his hands in a gesture that obviously meant 'sorry, my bad', which might be due to the curtness of Yoshio's response, or to the fact that Kaku had suddenly materialized at his friend's shoulder to see what was going on. A couple of people behind them snickered as if that was funny in itself. Kaku thought he caught another flinch from Yoshio, but this one was hidden so well even he had a hard time spotting it. 

"Can we go now please?" Yoshio asked in a low voice, eyes fixed on the pavement near the mouth of the alley. 

"Yes, of course, I’m sorry." Kaku lifted the groceries from Yoshio's hand and turned to leave. 

A shout made him look back. Judu said something that was obviously smoothing down anything that might have been said, and 'see you tonight, yeah?' Kaku nodded, since it didn't really engage him either way. Judu and co might be an avenue to explore, but first he had to find out what had made Yoshio clam up like that, and if it could threaten either of them. There were still too many currents here that Kaku did not grasp, damn language barrier...

Yoshio was quiet as he got into the car a few minutes later. He didn't meet Kaku's eyes and he acted like he didn't hear Kaku's tentative query about what was wrong, and what had been said. He drove in silence for a minute, then suddenly pulled up at the curb. He put his head in one hand, elbow propped against the car's window sill. 

"That guy back there. He wanted to know if we were...you know. If you were my, uh, boyfriend. Do you know what that word means?" Yoshio finally said, resigned.

Kaku would have guessed from context. "Why should it matter to him if I am or not?" 

"I don't know, I don't think he was looking for trouble, he just tossed it out-" then Yoshio blinked and looked at Kaku as if he'd reconsidered the latter's question and found it odd. 

The silence stretched. Kaku's mind was focusing on it one hundred percent now. This had little to do with the kids, this was something else, he'd felt its edges these past few days, it was part of the reason Yoshio kept himself so walled up. 

"...He asked that when I said you were living with me." Yoshio's eyes kept flickering to and from meeting Kaku's gaze. 

"Oh. You should have just told him I'm a basket case who lives on your couch, that'd teach him to make assumptions," said Kaku in an attempt to lighten the mood, which failed when he had to reword his reply and make it simpler for Yoshio's comprehension. 

Once more, his comment seemed to have appeared odd to Yoshio. But Kaku was a poor amnesia victim, he was bound to say stupid things and commit a multitude of social blunders, right?

"Um...did you know...I was..."

"Into men? Yes. It wasn't hard to guess. But you didn't seem to want to talk about it, so I didn't say anything." Yoshio had dug out some clothing from a closet this morning, when it was obvious that Kaku's black suit desperately needed a proper wash. The denims and shirt had been a bit too big for Kaku and way too big for Yoshio. There'd been a shut-off look on Yoshio's face when he'd handed over the clothes that lead Kaku to pretend he hadn't noticed the possible implications, but if Yoshio thought it'd take a genius to figure them out...Kaku had assumed by now that the whole matter was taboo, as it was on more than enough islands back home, and left it at that. 

"Oh," Yoshio said faintly. "Um...that's not why I let you slee- stay on- stay at my place, you know that, right?" 

"Of course. You're a kind man, Yoshio, a generous one, I completely understand that." 

"Yeah...no, I mean, helping you out is what anybody would do." Yoshio was staring at him still, almost in disbelief. "You...you don’t mind? You didn't mind when you figured out?"

"I guessed pretty quickly, and no, I didn't mind. It was pretty obvious the last thing you had in mind was make a pass at me-"

"No of _course_ not- I'd never-"

"I know that, I know that," Kaku soothed. "I'm sorry that kid back there got it mixed up. Though it doesn't really matter what they assume. Does it?" 

Yoshio's breath hitched like a short, mirthless and slightly bewildered laugh. "I suppose if I knew, um, karate or whatever it was you did back there, then it probably wouldn't matter if some guy in the street just popped that out. It doesn't matter anyway. I mean, they're just kids, we'll never see them again, they don't know where we live- I live- I...uh...do you know where you learned to do that back there?" 

"No, sorry. I just knew I could."

"You scared the hell out of me," Yoshio said a good deal more harshly than he was wont to speak to Kaku or anybody. Then he shook his head and muttered an apology before Kaku could even respond. His eyes seemed glued to the steering wheel. "I should have told you earlier, but I just didn't know how to bring it up without it sounding...Some people, uh, some p-people don't take it well-" Yoshio broke off abruptly and leaned forward to turn the key in the car, making it whine since it had already been on. A look of self-directed annoyance, out of proportion to the minor mistake, flashed through Yoshio's body language and he pulled away from the curb recklessly, making someone honk behind them. Kaku wondered who it was who'd not taken it well. They must have been close, and it must have been ugly.

"You could have just told me. I certainly don't mind. I can't remember any of my former relationships, of course," Kaku added, to defuse the snarl of lingering tension in the car, "but there are some things I know about myself instinctively, and I'm pretty sure I've slept with both men and women before my accident."

Which was the truth, but from the way Yoshio almost put their car into a big metal pole at that point, that piece of information could probably have waited until they'd gotten back to the apartment. 

 

 

"Are you really sure about this?" Yoshio asked for the third time, though he'd resisted all suggestions to leave and pick Kaku up later.

"Of course. It'll be fine. It's not easy staying locked up in the apartment for days."

The look Yoshio gave the long, low concrete building clearly stated "I can think of better alternatives to staying in than _this_." The address Judu had given them had turned out to be a gym, rather than a more ordinary nightspot, and Yoshio had looked reassured until they'd gotten near enough to the building to hear loud, thumping music echo from it.

"Why are you so worried?" Kaku asked, stopping a few feet from the door. 

This time, Yoshio actually answered instead of denying he was worried about anything. "Well...I'm afraid we might get into an argument. Maybe even a fight."

Kaku was definitely not afraid of getting into a fight, but that didn't mean he wanted to. Sure, it'd be a nice bit of stress-relief to counter the twitchiness of too much TV, but he didn't think he could afford it.

"Why are you afraid they'll start a fight?"

"Because...because I'm not their age, not in their group, because I'm Japanese, because I'm-...stuff."

"Some of them are Japanese. Right? With the eyes like yours?"

"Oh god, they're Chinese, Kaku, or Korean maybe and they were all probably born here and please do _not_ say that, okay? Or we really will get into a fight. Seriously."

"I won't say that, and if there's any sign of trouble, I'll make sure we're both out of there in a few seconds. You have nothing to worry about." Kaku tried to radiate confidence. He must have been successful, because Yoshio followed him into the gym. It wasn't a den of iniquity, it wasn't a gangland rendezvous, it was only a large space full of music and young men and women doing things with skates, bikes and spring-board gymnastics that were not recommended for people with brain damage. 

It wasn't the way Yoshio would have chosen to spend the evening, but a fight failed to materialize and he didn't have all that terrible a time of it, watching along with a few other spectators as the kids went through their paces and competed for bragging rights. As for Kaku, he still couldn’t speak the language, and the percussive music annoyed him, but he made a lot of new friends that night notwithstanding, and that was never wasted.

 

\---

 

The music stalked him. It was in the TV, it rang out from cars waiting at stop lights, it blasted from the machines Judu's friend carried with him. It was still thumping through Kaku's mind two weeks later, despite his attempt to get rid of it with meditation. It timed his movements as he attacked the grout around the sink. 

Kaku thought of it as paying the rent. Yeah, he was working his cover story and earning his keep. It made it a little easier to put up with than thinking 'I'm one of the Wold Government's top secret agents and I'm stuck on an alien planet, cleaning a bathroom.' And when 'paying the rent' failed to cheer him up, he'd grimly remind himself that he'd done a lot worse during previous infiltrations.

The little piece of scum stubbornly clinging to the faucet fitting had just surrendered when he heard the door open and Yoshio's cheerful "I’m home. Oh, sorry, I meant to say, I'm home." 

The second version had been in English. Kaku didn't use the language himself except those few phrases that he knew he'd mastered perfectly from television. His plan precluded him from sounding like a foreigner trying to learn the language; he had to sound like someone who'd known it all his life, had forgotten it due to brain damage and was remembering it in chunks. To 'help' him, he'd asked Yoshio to speak to him in English for simple things. What words he still hadn't picked out from TV, he could guess from Yoshio's body language using context and gut instinct. He could now follow easy conversations quite well, better than a non-English speaker would be able to in that short a time, as Gilchrist and Yoshio had both concluded. The brain-damage theory was gaining more and more credence. 

"Welcome back," Kaku said politely, leaving the cleaning for now and popping his head into the kitchen. "Did you get the eggs? I can make us-..."

Yoshio was at one of the cupboards, putting groceries away. There was another bag on the table, and a stack of letter-sized paper displaying block print and a lithographed photo. Kaku's heart skipped a beat as he got a better look at the top sheet. It was a bounty poster with his picture on it. 

What. The. Hell?

He picked up the top paper and examined it, noting with increasing alarm that the rest of the stack was the same; his picture, expression a little puzzled, his name, a few lines of text and a rather hefty sum of money. But he hadn't _done_ anything! This didn't make any sense. Neither did Yoshio's attitude, busy putting away pasta as if there wasn't a serious problem on his kitchen table. 

"What is this?" Kaku finally asked, trying to keep his voice from tightening. 

"Hmm? Ah, the posters. I thought it might be a good idea," said Yoshio, glancing over his shoulder. "It probably won't help, but it can't hurt either."

Okay, this was definitely not what Kaku thought it was, because there would be no way in hell this could be considered a 'good idea that can't hurt'. "Yoshio, _what_ is this?"

"Huh? Oh, I'm sorry, you pick up English again so fast, I sometimes forget you still have problems reading it. It's a flyer asking for information about you. Someone who saw you right before your accident might come forward. Why, what did you think it was?"

"Nothing, nothing," Kaku answered, studying the paper with a new and rather relieved eye. "What's the number at the bottom here?"

"My phone." 

"Oh. Of course." Kaku flattered himself to think that if he ever fell from grace and went to the wrong side of the law, he'd earn himself a bounty that would make most pitiful pirates pale in comparison. Nonetheless, this figure had been rather high for the worth of the dollar on a world where nobody should have the faintest clue who he was and how dangerous he could be. 

Now that the picture of his face on a wanted poster had stopped hitting his stupid panic button, he took the time to decipher the words beneath the photo. It wasn't 'warrant put out for multiple homicides in the name of a stark justice most civilians are unable to understand', it was 'Looking for information about an accident. If you've seen this man before the 17th of December please contact' etc.

"Yes, that's right, that's what it says," Yoshio confirmed, when Kaku read it out. "You're making amazing progress. I printed the posters at work. Just don't tell anybody. I used up a lot of paper. But it's for a good cause. I thought...well, I thought it was worth a shot, after what Shao told us yesterday." 

Yesterday's no-progress report was what Yoshio was referring to. Detective Shao had shown up at the apartment in person to inform them that he'd found no police reports concerning Kaku, no clues, nothing. Which, three weeks after the accident, was not good news; the chances of finding anything now were ever decreasing. He'd not been happy saying that. Detective Shao was a decent young man who seemed to have lost his suspicion of Kaku and who'd looked rather concerned on his behalf when he'd asked what boiled down to 'Are you _sure_ you don't remember anything yet? Because now your life might start getting awkward.'

"I'm off shift tomorrow, so I thought we could go and hang them up along the highway where you were found. You know, rest stops, diners, stuff like that. Shao - and Gilchrist - think you were hitchhiking when you got-...well, we don't know what happened exactly. But if somebody saw you, I'm sure, um," Yoshio darted a look at Kaku's nose and then studiously looked away, "they _might_ remember you." 

"Can we go back to the place where I woke up?" Kaku asked, looking up quickly from his- he was still thinking of it as a bounty poster. 

"Sure, if you want. Maybe you'll remember something."

"Maybe I will." 

 

The stretch of gravel and dirt looked totally different, and not only because he was seeing the place by the light of day. It was different because Kaku knew that the nearby swooshing sounds was highway traffic to Vancouver, because he knew the smell of tar and smoke was pollution from upward to a million people living nearby, and because he had Yoshio wandering around and asking him how on earth Kaku could be so sure this was the place, this no-man's-land along the Trans-Canada all looked the same to him. Kaku's growing grasp and knowledge of this world had been a comfort so far, but now, seeing how its optic changed the way he saw the scene of his arrival, Kaku felt an ache which had no basis in logic, the feeling he was now even further from home than before.

"Here." He couldn't manage positive, so he stuck to neutral. "This is where I woke up."

There was a crunch of gravel as Yoshio walked over. "Here? In this hole?"

'This hole' was the depression left by Kaku's body when he'd crash-landed. The bush was still there, ground into the dirt, though it had started to gradually right itself in the unhurried, stubborn way of vegetation, a slow-motion struggle to pick itself up and survive. Kaku found himself wishing it luck.

"Kaku, I really don't want to leave you here," said Yoshio, trying to sound firm and only managing worried. 

"It's only for an hour. I told you, I want to be by myself to think, and try and remember. Don't worry, I'll wait for you near the highway. But far from the traffic."

"But-"

"Stop worrying. I'll be fine. Go." 

Yoshio looked unhappily at the hand squeezing his shoulder, and then held up a few posters. "I guess I'll go on to the next stopovers then, and put these on the message boards. Stay here, don't wander off. Do you remember my phone number? Here." Kaku found one of the posters stuffed into his hands, along with some spare change. "If we get separated- or anything- just get to a phone and give me a ring. You remembered how to use them like I showed you, right? Leave me a message. I can pick it up with my cell-"

"I'll be standing right over there in an hour, Yoshio," Kaku said good-humoredly, pushing his friend towards the road. "Stop being a mother hen and go." 

Yoshio finally walked off, grumbling about brain damage and mother hens under his breath. Kaku watched him get back into his car and leave from the cover of the bluff, just to be sure. Then he used Soru to get back to the flattened bush. 

This was the first time he'd been truly alone since he'd arrived, and not boxed in by walls and way too many people living on top of each other. Kaku felt like he was breathing properly for the first time in days, darting around the area with Soru, Geppou, shadowboxing at high speed, and turning into a giraffe just because he could.

Or rather, couldn't.

That was a nasty shock, and one he did not expect at all since his Rokushiki was fine. But when he pulled in the direction where his Zoan powers usually resided, he came up empty. It left him standing there, arms extended before him as he expectantly waited for a transformation to quadruped that was not going to happen, and an undoubtedly funny and startled look on his face. For Kaku, the situation was rather lacking in the humor department. He could fight without his Zoan transformation, he'd done so for most of his life, but it did cut down on his total power, and he felt as if he'd lost some last resort he'd been counting on without really thinking about it. 

After a lot of effort and concentration that left him with a splitting headache, he managed a partial transformation to a rather shaky parody of a ruminant- then he quickly morphed back, alarmed by the nightmare possibility that this difficulty would worsen and he might get stuck as a freakshow act from now on. Yeah, that'd be a way to blend into this new society. Please ignore the walking, talking, squareish speckled thing over there, ladies and gentlemen, it just wants to use the elevator and then it will be on its way.

Grim urgency renewed, Kaku used Geppou and focused on thoroughly exploring the air above his landing site. He had no idea how far he'd fallen once he'd made it through the door, it'd been night and he'd had other things on his mind. He didn't think it'd been that far, all told. Sixty feet, tops. He used Geppou to rise to a hundred or so, as high as he dared when he knew he might be spotted from the highway at this altitude. He was not surprised to find absolutely nothing but thin and somewhat polluted air.

The situation wanted to be depressing as all hell, but Kaku called upon his discipline and kept his emotions on a tight leash. He methodically set about signaling his presence here for anyone who might one day make it through from the other side. The chances were slim to none, but a CP9 agent ignored no possibility, especially in these dire straits. He carved a few words in Navy code on a large flat rock, directing attention to the city to the west, and then arranged a dozen boulders into the symbol Lucci had tattooed on his upper arms. That should prove to anyone coming through Blueno's door that Kaku was alive. As an afterthought, he folded the poster Yoshio had given him into a dirty plastic bag he'd found clinging to a nearby pile of junk, and stuck it under one of the rocks he put slightly out of alignment. 

He straightened up, glancing around to judge the overall effect of his signal, a message in a bottle which no seas could carry home. His eyes rested for a long time on the rock covering the poster, then he grimly saluted it like the grave of a fallen soldier, turned on his heels and walked away.

Yoshio found him sitting on the bluff by the side of the highway. Kaku was quiet on the way back, and his friend tactfully left him to his thoughts. They were not of home or of rescue. Kaku could no longer afford to think of those. He had to lock them away and concentrate on the 'now' to survive. And he had more than enough to keep him busy and stop him from brooding. To begin with, Kaku decided, he was going to tackle the problem of a missing identity.


	4. Chapter 4

When Kaku saw his new friend's name written down on his sport's bag, he realized it was 'Jude', not Judu. Jude and his pals at the gym were the start of the plan, particularly an acquaintance of theirs who did a bit of dealing on the side. But Kaku didn't want to involve them too heavily, so he did a lot of the groundwork himself. It took him three weeks to find the person he needed, three weeks and a broken arm (not his own, of course). It was probably the broken arm that was his best introduction. 

Eventually he stood in a hotel suite before a man known as Chang Wei-leng, most certainly not his real name. Kaku didn't introduce himself at all rather than bother with a fake. The four tough guys hovering around the comfortably seated Chang didn't introduce themselves either, assuming they could do anything more than bark. 

Mr. Chang spoke passable Japanese. That had been one of the conditions Kaku had had to impose, even though it had restricted his options considerably. But his English, which was now good enough to order food, ask for directions or get him into this meeting, was in no way adequate for the kind of negotiations ahead of him. A possibility Chang Wei-leng seemed to in no way buy; it was obvious five minutes into the talks that he thought Kaku's attempts to speak only Japanese, dodgy Japanese at that, and pretend to understand no English, was a smokescreen. What Kaku might have to gain from that was not something the agent could figure out, but he was in a milieu where paranoia paid off tenfold, so it didn't surprise him. 

The hotel suite had two rooms, the bedroom behind a closed door and this living room. It must cost four to five hundred a night. But from the way the people in the lobby had carefully avoided looking at Kaku on his way up, this place had _connections_ , and Kaku would be very surprised if Chang had paid a single red cent. 

"So you need a new identity?" Chang asked, settling himself more comfortably in the leather armchair, his back to the window twenty floors up. Kaku had elected to stand.

"No, I need _an_ identity. My situation is complicated. But I need official papers, some traces of my existence that can stand up to inspection, and a bank account with a bit of money would be nice as well."

Chang Wei-leng smiled as if he was appreciating a joke he'd just heard. "You said as much to my intermediary. And he told me that in return, you propose to...?"

"Kill someone for you."

Chang Wei-leng's expression didn't flicker, Kaku might have just as well said 'drive a cab'. "That's an intriguing proposition."

"It's a deal for you. The cost it will take to create an identity isn't anywhere near the sum needed to pay for a professional hit."

Up until now, Chang had thought Kaku was a joke; a strung-out lunatic who was ready to crowbar someone for a bit of dough. Now, however, Kaku could see the notion that this was serious enter Chang's mind. Which was why Chang's next words left the door open to haggling. "You don't seem to have a good idea of the price scales we're talking about, I'm afraid. Oh, papers are easy, but setting you up with an identity that can't be overturned with a little scrutiny is difficult and not cheap at all." 

"I have some ideas that will make this less expensive for you." Kaku had been doing some research in the local public library, a laborious process but easier to manage than Yoshio's 'computer'. 

"And all this is aid of...? If I knew who you are trying to avoid, I might know what kind of costs we're looking at. And I do mean money, I'm afraid."

"Mr. Chang," said Kaku patiently, "I'm sure you've already done some research on me, enough to know I don't have any, shall we say, references in the trade. I don't pretend to. However, I do know a lot, a considerable lot, about the subject of assassinations, and so I know - as should you - that it's neither useful nor wise to ask someone in my position any question starting with who, why, what or where. As for money, I don't have any, or we wouldn't be having this conversation. And one more thing: this is a one-time offer only. One hit against my papers. I am not trying to drum up business. Once this is done, our association is at an end."

Chang stared at him for a whole minute, before smiling with calculated mirth and no warmth. "But I'm afraid I don't have anyone for you to bump off."

"I'm sure if you and your superiors think about it, you'll find someone. Someone difficult to access, where you'd need a professional. Someone who'd challenge even a professional, as a matter of fact."

"And you could do it?"

"Do you particularly need your bodyguards?"

"What?"

Kaku's lunge forward took out the man standing on Chang's left in the chest before anyone could even blink. The bodyguard hit the wall with a vicious thud, a scant foot from the window. Kaku had already spin-kicked his counterpart on Chang's right into unconsciousness, and then Soru took him to where the last two near the door were trying to get their guns out. Kaku had seen a lot of these guns on TV and wasn't about to underestimate them, however small and dainty they looked compared to muskets. He took the man with the faster draw down hard, palm hammering the solar plexus. A rib snapped. 

The last man, a big redhead with the ugliest pattern of freckles Kaku had ever seen, had cleared his gun from its shoulder holster when it was ripped away with a violence that made him holler with surprise and pain. Kaku tossed the weapon into the furthest empty corner of the room, then he grabbed the guard, spun him around and gripped the man's throat near the hyoid.

Chang was on his feet, but like most men in his position, he wasn't armed. Criminal middle management did not like getting their hands dirty, or be caught packing, and they rarely needed to. His features were carved into a neutral mask. He said nothing. Kaku's voice sounded loud in the silence after the violence, highlighted by the choked breathing of the third bodyguard.

"That's proved I have the skills, I should think. Now if you need me to prove I can kill someone in cold blood, I'll need to know if you still have any use for your bodyguards," said Kaku, while inwardly he was muttering 'Come on. Be smart. Look me in the eye and realize I will do it, so please, please don't make me kill for no bloody reason...'

Chang wet his lips but otherwise betrayed no other trace of alarm or confusion. "I will need to discuss this with my business partners." 

"Of course." Kaku released his victim. The bodyguard staggered forward a couple of feet, clutching his wrenched fingers. He looked quickly at Chang for instructions. Chang waved him down.

"How can I contact you?"

"You don't." Kaku tugged down his cap and headed towards the door. "I'll be in touch through the channel I used today. Not that I'm hard to find. A bit of asking around will locate me. I don't want that. Deal's off if anyone shows up at my doorstep. Oh, and one last thing." Kaku swung open the door and stopped on the threshold, his back to the room, hands in the pockets of his black tracksuit. "I may not have worked for anyone you or your superiors have heard of before, Mr. Chang, but I do know how this profession works. I know a hitman who's stopped being useful is nothing more than a liability, someone who could be made to talk. It's very tempting, once he or she has done your dirty work, to eliminate that liability. But that's not always wise. Or safe. Keep that in mind while you discuss this with your 'business partners'. If I do this for you, I advise you to meet me again with my papers, not a bullet. Yes, I strongly advise you to. Have a good day."

Chang didn't say anything as Kaku walked out without looking back.

 

 

There was a man.

Chang must have been impressed with Kaku's demonstration and he'd communicated this to his superiors. But as Chang explained to Kaku on their second meeting, five days after the first, Chang's organization didn't go for strong-armed tactics, which attracted too much attention to their business which was, on the whole, nearly legitimate.

But there was a man whose funeral would not cause Chang and his bosses to shed bitter tears, and if that man were to have, say, a deadly misfortune in his own home, in the middle of some serious protection, that would have interesting ripple effects on certain 'nearly legitimate' markets. Though it was understood that this was in no way a commission. Chang went on at lengths about all the ways he could deny this conversation had ever happened if Kaku were caught. Kaku nodded in understanding. He'd expected no less. What he hadn't expected was that his target would not be within walking distance of Vancouver, but in another country altogether. 

Chang didn't ask any questions when Kaku told him what would be required. Kaku must _really_ have impressed him, or else Chang was used to many a detour in this sort of dealings. 

The illusion was easy to set up. Kaku left with one of Chang's men who pretended to be a friendly trucker Kaku had met at Jude's gym. The man had offered to drive the poor amnesiac up the Trans-Canada all the way to Calgary to see if Kaku could find traces of his existence, and drop off more flyers with his face on it (which now more than ever looked like bounty posters). The idea found no favors with Yoshio, but there wasn't much he could say in final. Suspicion completely failed to cross his mind, and Kaku knew that was the best way to convince Shao, or Gilchrist or anybody else who might wonder where Kaku was going to be for the next three days.

A few hours out of Vancouver, the trucker left the Trans-Canada to head due south. They crossed the border at a small customs outpost whose agents, either through laxity or bribes, didn't look too closely into the cargo where Kaku was concealed. Kaku was feeling the lack of control over all this acutely, but at this point he was in fate's hands. 

His mood lifted a little when he was introduced to planes. The World Government had been experimenting with dirigibles for a few years now, but the Grand Line weather being what it was, they'd been nicknamed Suicide Balloons shortly after their inception. The small private plane made an insane racket, but the sheer fact that he was flying above the clouds made it almost all worthwhile.

They landed at a tiny airfield as evening was starting to fall. Kaku found a driver waiting to take him across an empty countryside of cut fields, small woods and dirt roads. Kaku had little to no idea where they were, except somewhere in the United States of America. Chang had provided no map and no details. The driver uttered not a single word for the entire two hours the trip lasted, and he wore his dark glasses even after night had fallen. Kaku kept up a friendly, if silent, attitude and watched the black shape of trees jump out in the headlamps of their car and then fade back into the gathering night behind them.

Finally the driver pulled into a layover on a little-used road and silently pointed to some distant lights visible as pinpoints through a lightly wooded dip in the terrain. The car was about a mile from the mansion where the target resided. A large city could be guessed over the near horizon, marked by a smear of polluted light, but out here all was quiet. For now. Chang had given Kaku a rough layout of the grounds and said that the driver would wait for him for two hours, and it would be truly unwise for Kaku to be late.

Kaku got out of the car, and then popped his head back in. "Excuse me, do you speak Japanese?"

The driver looked at him through those dark glasses without answering. 

"Yes? No? A little bit, I think." The guy was good, he kept his body language to a minimum, but Kaku's gut instinct told him the driver could understand him. "Good. Because I do want to say that I am sorry about this next bit."

The man stiffened - Kaku's gut had been right - but he had only enough time to rip his hands away from the steering wheel and dart towards his jacket. Kaku was already back in the car, grabbing him by the wrists and then hauling him out of the vehicle as if he were a child.

The man shouted at him. Kaku quickly gagged him with the edge of his hand. "Shhh. I'm not going to hurt you. Though I'm afraid the next hour won't be comfortable."

He'd stolen the plastic-covered power cable from Yoshio's apartment yesterday morning before leaving. The driver had lost his dark glasses in the scuffle; he glared venom as Kaku bound his wrists behind his back, but he'd stopped making noise. He must have realized that he'd be in just as much trouble if the target's men found them here. Kaku patted him down and relieved him of a knife and a small snub-nosed gun in an armpit holster. Kaku examined the gun briefly. This was the first time he'd had the opportunity of handling one. He wished he could just get rid of the ammo, but he didn't really understand how the pistol worked without a revolving barrel, and he might miss a cartridge. So, with considerably more effort than he'd estimated - this world had fantastic gunsmiths - he ripped off the trigger and hammer.

The driver's eyes bulged.

Kaku dusted his hands tidily as he addressed his temporary prisoner. "Now, I will be back in two hours or less, and then you'll drive me to that place the plane landed, or back to the border if the plane is not where it's supposed to be. I can get back into Canada on my own." The driver looked like he believed that statement without any problem. "I won't hurt you. I'm not even sure you were going to hurt me, but even if you were, I can assure you - and Mr. Chang - that I understand completely. It's how the business goes, I know that. I'm just being cautious. I'll leave you in the back here. If someone finds you- do you understand me? I'll speak more slowly. If someone finds you, pretend you were assaulted and forced to drive me here, and you don't know anything more than that. Just keep them busy, and I'll get rid of them when I get back." The driver looked like he believed that statement as well. His eyes kept darting as if against his will towards the destroyed gun Kaku had tossed down on the seat next to him. "Please don't worry. It's in my interest to keep you alive. I do not wish to make an enemy of Mr. Chang, and besides, I don't know how to drive a car."

Kaku stopped talking and waited, and eventually the trussed-up man nodded.

"Good." 

He wondered what Chang would think when the driver reported back. Oh well, Kaku would deal with that when it happened. Maybe Chang had been perfectly honest in his dealings. Maybe he would be offended at the manhandling of his subordinate. Yeah, maybe. Kaku loved to fight the way other people loved to gamble, but he knew how to curtail that habit when it could endanger the mission, and he did not care to be made a fool of. Particularly a dead fool.

But now was not the time to think of those details. Right now...there was a man he had to kill.

Moving from tree to tree, Kaku eluded the guards in their outpost near the estate's entrance. He couldn’t elude the grim feeling riding on his shoulders. He spent ten minutes up a tall beech, blindly watching the two-man patrol doing rounds throughout the large gardens. It wasn't the target's defenses that gave him pause, it was his conscience. 

It went against the grain. The first and foremost rule of CP9, its credo, was to serve justice and obey orders, that went without saying, but a corollary to that was the prohibition of killing unless dictated by those same orders. This had always been particularly important for Kaku; he felt it distinguished them from vulgar hitmen, well, that and the salary. The government's assassins did not kill for money, for expediency or for personal revenge. They were not murderers or vigilantes. They were a stark uncompromising force, yes, but a force for justice, for the good of their society, and always at the orders of those who were well placed to see the larger picture. As such, they never killed anyone without orders or justification (though in some of his coworker's cases, 'justification' was occasionally a slim and debatable thing). 

Kaku made sure his leather gloves were tight, and tugged down his cap, then realized he'd cut down on his field of vision. He fiddled with it a few seconds, finally ripped it off and ran his fingers through his short hair. God damn it, I'm as nervous as my first time on the job, he thought with faint self-contempt. He was at that, but back then he'd also been rash, excited, full of convictions and so stupidly young. Today he was old at twenty-four, cynical and lost...

Well, time to get out of this tree and do the work he'd come here for. It was a matter of survival. At least the man he was here for was probably not going to be much of a loss to the human species, if Kaku had figured out what the 'nearly legitimate' business was about. In his days Kaku had killed the innocent, the just, the guilty and the damned, and it had never made a difference because he did not have the right to pass personal judgment on them. He was only the executioner. The ethics of tonight's work were muddled, but Kaku was at least glad he wasn't here to kill a judge, for example, or a cop or any other target that might have been tempting for Chang's 'friends'. 

The night air was cold and damp with the smell of snow. It was February on this world, the start of the year and the days where winter got serious. It'd been the middle of spring back home, buds blooming, life bursting out fierce and quiet - but Kaku was trying not to think of that any more. He had to concentrate on the way the two guards, hired goons by the looks of it, were hunched over, chins buried in the collars of their jackets and coats. They had impressive-looking artillery hanging from straps over their shoulders and absolutely no inkling that there might be cause to use them tonight; they just wanted their shift to end so they could go get coffee somewhere warm. Chang had described the protection around the target's house as 'impressive', but, as Kaku was coming to realize, it was all relative. The smallest pirate commander or tinpot dictator back home could mount a force that would knock these guys into a cocked hat. Kaku had wormed his way into places with ten times the manpower, so there was really no need for him to hang around like a ninny.

Chang had also said he could not give Kaku a layout of the security system; he'd made it sound like the greatest challenge. Kaku had managed to maneuver Yoshio into rent out a few movies - the TV also played movies, it was the greatest invention, really - that had break-ins and security systems as part of the plot. By now, Kaku had realized that TV showed more fiction than fact, and that most of what he saw was totally made up, even things which he himself had witnessed on the Grand Line or could do himself. So he wasn't sure how much he could rely on what he'd seen, but security systems here did look more impressive than nightingale floors, watch towers and a boatload of guards, which was what the targets back home had to make do with.

But however different things were here, there was always one totally reliable constant: human error.

A guard on the third floor of the large house opened a balcony window for a quick smoke. He nearly swallowed it when Kaku appeared before him, hovering in mid-air. He would not have had the time to make out any detail, much less Kaku's features; he was unconscious in an eyeblink. Kaku walked right in. If there were any alarms, the guard would have disabled them to grab his nicotine hit.

He made his way quickly down the stairs to the second floor, head down and cap pulled low in case the building was riddled with cameras like in the movies. Kaku might have nothing much to fear in a massive fight, but he didn't want to kill anybody other than the man he was here for if he could help it, and above all he did not want to take the chance that someone would see his features and link him to this crime scene one day. 

It wasn't quite midnight, but the target was in his suite already, on the second floor. Kaku had spotted him through a slit in the curtain over the windows while circling the house through the tree-line, reconnoitering. A girl was sleeping in the adjacent bedroom with the lamp and the television on. Kaku hoped she was a deep sleeper. Bar the target working on a computer at a desk in the larger room, nobody else had been in sight, but Kaku's view through the curtain had been restricted. The killer would proceed carefully. There could be a bodyguard or three standing watch in one of the blind corners. If that was a case, it was regrettable but they would have to die as well. 

The target was alone, as it turned out, confident in his thick walls, his security system and his dozen guards inside and out. He had gotten up from the desk and was heading towards another part of the room for reasons best known to himself. He was a middle-aged man, still fit, hair prematurely grey. He glanced around when the door opened, but it was too late. Kaku's full-speed strike took him in the throat, at that spot of the larynx where the final scream of a dying life could be pinched off to no more than a bloody gurgle.

Kaku stared blindly at his four fingers deep in the man's neck. He hadn't meant to do that quite like that. He'd meant only a clean Shigan-...He had blood on his face, on his hand and spattered on one arm, but he'd instinctively angled the body away so most of the geyser had passed him by, doing no more than sprinkling him. The body twitched and fought him, though most of what had made this man a human being was already dead. 

Instead of letting go, Kaku found himself gripping harder, tissue tearing beneath his fingers.

This wasn't...him. He didn't usually- he and Lucci had this one-upmanship in regards to the cleanness and speed of the kill, this wasn't _him_. Yet even now, Kaku felt the urge, as he gripped the body dangling like a dislocated mannequin, to rip, to tear, to get the reason why he was here and why this was happening to him out of this man he'd been forced to kill without any orders. 

Survival, Kaku told himself grimly as he dropped the body and left the room. Then he came back in, cursing himself, and did an unpleasant but necessary butchering job with the driver's knife to hide the fact that the hit had been done with bare hands, as this was bound to intrigue investigators. As an afterthought he checked the room. Still no signs of any bodyguards, but the girl in the next room was starting to stir. A search of the bureau turned up some phials and unmarked pills which Kaku supposed were drugs, as well as a cashbox full of wrinkled bills, a hundred of them or so, petty change for this kind of man. He pocketed everything, planning to dump the former and stash the latter. If the police in this country were as lazy as some he'd had to deal with back home, they'd assume some desperate addict had broken in for a fix. It was so flimsy as to be totally transparent, but it was the best he could do within the parameters he had to work with, and even if the investigators weren't fooled for a minute, they'd probably be expecting some sort of attempt at misdirection and it was practically a professional courtesy to provide it.

Ten minutes later, he opened the rear door of his getaway vehicle. "I'm back," he needlessly told the hog-tied and gaping driver in the back seat. "You wouldn't happen to have a towel handy, would you? I made a bit of a mess."

\---

 

Kaku unlocked the door and then stared blankly at the apartment keys he was holding. Yoshio had pressed a spare set into his hand as Kaku left for his fictional truck drive to Calgary, in case he got back during the night or while Yoshio was away at work. Kaku hadn't appreciated the import of the gesture then, too intent on what he had to do. He wasn't sure he could measure the significance now, just how much that had meant to a retiring hermit like Yoshio. Kaku felt hollow, brittle and bone-tired, and he just wanted to stop thinking for a few hours...

The door opened, making him start. He'd been off woolgathering while standing on the doorstep like a complete idiot.

"You're back!" Yoshio gripped his hand - a rare gesture from someone who seemed to consider physical contact an infringement. Yoshio pulled him in gently when Kaku made no move to enter. "I was just having breakfast. Do you want some?"

"No," Kaku answered, keeping the shudder out of his voice. 

Yoshio closed the door behind them. "You look tired."

"...Yes."

The plane had been there, ready to take him back. Kaku hoped that meant that Chang had intended to be above-board in his dealings, though of course the plane was presumably running something illegal and had its own schedule, it might not have been waiting for him at all. Kaku chose to take it on faith. He'd thanked the driver and apologized again. The man had given him a bitter, baffled look and driven away, still without a word. The trip back was as uneventful as the trip over, leaving Kaku stranded at a Vancouver truck stop at four in the morning. He'd gone to a Laundromat to wash his bloodied clothes, dressed in the spares Yoshio had given him and that he'd stuffed into a borrowed rucksack before leaving. It felt like weeks ago. 

"So, did you have a good trip? Did you find anything?"

Had Kaku found out who he was, Yoshio meant. Kaku found it almost too much irony to stomach that it really felt as if he'd lost himself even further. 

"I'm sorry," Yoshio whispered. Kaku realized that his expression had betrayed him. Great, looked like his infiltrator's mask of good-natured cheer that had served him through thick and thin was also deserting him. Damn it, what else did this world think it had to take from him?

"It was a long shot at best." Yoshio's hand was on Kaku's shoulder, gripping gently. "But I am sorry. Don't worry, okay? I know we'll find something one day."

We. Poor Yoshio, who had no idea what he'd taken into his home. If Kaku had an ounce of decency, he'd not have returned here. But the infiltrator was not done with Yoshio yet, while the small part of Kaku which wasn't an agent, a spy or an assassin had to admit that the touch on his shoulder was somehow comforting...He reached up and squeezed Yoshio's hand, and couldn't figure out if it was a calculated gesture or honest gratitude and was too tired to analyze it further. He let Yoshio drag him over to the couch and fuss over him and ply him with tea and let him rest. He didn't have to examine his motives too closely right now, he could sleep for the next few weeks, which would be one way of handling the waiting game. Until Chang came through with the goods, and after all this, he'd better. Oh, he'd better, or Kaku would be finding out where _he_ lived...

 

 

It was Friday evening a couple of weeks down the road when his life started to move forward again. 

Kaku missed the doorbell; he was in the shower at the time. He'd found something of a part-time job at the gym, assisting with the tidying up, sparring with those who wanted a decent opponent for martial pursuits (yeah, right, the 'decent opponent' was holding himself back so much he was almost fighting backwards) and just generally helping out in exchange for a few tips, a chance to practice a little, and the opportunity to get out of the house and do something physical which did not imply thinking or watching TV. And of course creating connections that could help him out later, but Kaku the infiltrator, as well as the rest of him, was sort of in stasis right now. He'd done all he could and now he had to wait for the results.

When he heard Yoshio's voice suddenly rise in a shout, followed by a hurried hammering on the bathroom door and an excited "Kaku! Get out here! It's Detective Shao and he says they found something!", Kaku knew the waiting time was over. 

"What did you find?!" he asked Shao as soon as he'd set foot in the living room. Shao didn't seem surprised at the question shot to him in English. He'd been aware that Kaku had 'recovered' some of the language, and their last interview had been in simplified English, with Yoshio only interpreting the words Kaku got stuck on. Shao did look surprised, however, at the mess of scars networked across Kaku's chest. Kaku quickly pulled on his t-shirt and tucked it into his jeans. "Well? _Did_ you find anything?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, we did. Maybe you should sit down," Shao added kindly. "Both of you."

Yoshio and Kaku obediently sat down on the couch. Shao pulled up a chair on the other side of the coffee table. He had the smooth, professional mask back on, and behind his own mask of shock and eagerness, Kaku was watching the detective closely. 

"We had a lucky break. Are you going to be okay if I show this to you right here and now? Mr. Odari mentioned brain damage-"

"I'm fine. I'll be fine. Just tell me, please."

"Here. Your first name is Karl. Ring any bells? Last name Crandall."

Kaku made himself stare at the little booklet being extended towards him, his face painted with astonishment and uncertainty before he reached out with hands that were artfully shaking. Kaku had always been justifiably proud of his acting abilities, a talent of prime importance for an infiltrator and also the one area where he could surpass Lucci hands down, as the latter was graciously willing to admit. 

Yoshio was gripping his shoulder once again as they looked down at what Kaku was holding. "You found his passport?!"

"We found this too...Mr. Crandall?" Kaku glanced up, but only after a bewildered second. The amnesia ploy was all the more important now that he had a past and an existence that could be cross-questioned. "Does this look familiar?"

Kaku stared blankly at the rucksack without having to call upon his acting skills. "No. Should it?"

"We think it's yours. It was found near a Motel 6 dumpster in Revelstoke, off Highway One. It was open, the clothes spilling out. They're pretty much done for. This wallet was stuffed back inside it. It's got no money in it, or credit cards or anything, but your passport was right at the bottom of the bag, so they must have overlooked it."

"...They?" said Kaku once Yoshio had finished muttering a rough translation. 

"We don't know what happened, and chances are we never will, unless you remember it." Shao was giving him a long, searching look. "Maybe you will, now. I can't say anything officially, of course. But unofficially, I imagine you were mugged. Maybe somebody knocked you down from a motorbike, or ditched you from a car. They took your belongings and dumped the bag. It missed the dumpster, and somebody found it last week during a thaw, and dropped it off at the police station. I'd put out a bulletin, so the passport picture eventually got to me. This might mean that Revelstoke is where this all happened, or then again, maybe that's just where they left your stuff."

"Oh."

"You okay?"

"Uh...it's a lot to take in..." 

"I can imagine. Or rather, I can't begin to imagine. You gonna be okay?"

"Oh, sure. I mean, yes. Right?" Kaku judged that was sufficiently stunned and nonsensical to rise to the occasion, and went back to examining the passport. He'd forged a number of papers himself in his time, and this one - with no suspicious smudges, a clear photograph and only a few artful dumpster-related splotches - looked like a masterpiece. It'd have been worth every cent of the money he'd have paid for it, if only he'd been able to barter for it with cash...

"Does he have any family?" Yoshio's hand was still warm and solid on his shoulder. "Why didn't anybody report a missing person? Where does he live?"

Kaku looked up in time to catch Shao's shrug. "Can't say for sure, but once I had a name to go with your prints and picture, I ran a few checks. You're not registered for a driver's license, at least not in Canada. You do have a Social Insurance Number - here, I wrote it down on this paper, you'll need this. It's registered in Prince Rupert of all places, but only to a PO Box. You're not current with your health insurance in BC, though. You have no credit rating, but an old receipt at the bottom of your bag gave me your credit card number - that's that other number you're holding. It turns out you have an account at TBEI."

"At where?" Yoshio asked, surprised.

"Taipei Banking Exchange International. It's got an outlet here, but mainly they're quartered in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan."

"Why on earth would he have an account there? I mean, why not, I guess-"

"No, that is pretty odd." Shao's eyes had not left Kaku all this time. Kaku hadn't been able to give Chang Wei Leng much in the way of indication of how he'd like his identity to be handled. Chang had done what he'd thought best. Kaku had the unpleasant feeling that Chang's 'best' included giving him a bank account in a firm that was rather friendly to Chang's friends, perhaps to the extent of laundering money for them. It meant somebody inside the bank was in on the cover story and could provide the information that would give Kaku a solid existence, but on the other hand it was also bound to ring a few of Shao's alarms.

"But his passport might explain that," Shao continued. "It was issued in the Canadian embassy of Kobe, Japan, a couple of years ago."

"Japan?" Kaku asked, sounding suitably baffled. "Is that where I come from?"

"Looks like. Unfortunately the embassy won't send me info on a private citizen unless I have a mandate, and of course I don't. I did a few background checks as a matter of course, trying to give you a bit more than that," Shao added, pointed at the passport in Kaku's hands. "Can't say I found much, but from the stamp, you've only been in the country since last August. Came into Prince Rupert by sea. You might have worked your way over on a freighter. Since then, no real trace of you, but maybe you hadn't settled down yet. Your bank told me they have transactions logged for you across Canada all the way to Winnipeg."

"Can't the Japanese tell us anything?" Yoshio asked. 

"They might, but I don't really have the proper channels to ask. This is not an investigation. I ran the name Karl Crandall past Interpol - nothing came up - and with Immigration. Nothing came up there either, except confirmation that you're in the country legally. Looks like you were born Canadian, probably abroad, maybe in Japan. I can't check much more than that. It's no crime to have amnesia."

"Glad to hear it," Kaku muttered, slumping back into the couch. He'd hoped this would be the case. 

Of course Yoshio was far from satisfied with this answer.

"There's nothing much more I can do, Mr. Odari," Shao said calmly in his defense. "But Mr. Crandall can contact the embassy in Kobe as a regular citizen, as well as the prefecture of-...damn, I looked it up and now I forgot. You can find it online. Whatever prefecture Kobe is in. As for what happened once he landed here, he can look into that too, but the only way I can get involved with that is if he wants to press charges against the people who _perhaps_ assaulted him, and since he can't remember-"

"They could have killed him! You should have seen him, he was bruised all over. And he'd taken a blow to the head-"

"We have an incident report, yeah, but he could have been hit by a car. Or fallen down a hole. We don't know."

"That’s okay. It's okay, Yoshio," said Kaku in Japanese, a hand on his friend's knee to stop him from protesting further. "He's right, we don’t know what happened. Anybody could have found my bag after I wandered away from it, and stripped it clean. It's okay, it doesn't matter-"

"It does matter," Yoshio grumbled. Then, in English, "Are you sure you can't help him find something in Japan? He might have family over there."

"If he does, they didn't come forward to the consulate to find out what happened to him. We don’t know where his family is, or even if he has any. All indications are that he lived abroad for a good long while and in Japan for a time, but that's all we can say at this stage."

"I can't believe there aren't any- any traces-..."

"That happens. More than you'd think, especially if he was in transit, or visiting this country," Shao said with the bitter smile of someone who's seen a lot of people fall through the cracks, and found their bodies along the way. Kaku knew CP1 agents with the same attitude. "It's not as hard as you think to end up without much in the way of connections, or at least none that would care enough to file a missing persons report if you disappeared. He has no fixed address in Canada, and he's been here too long for tourism. He's got no job that I can determine. Your bank was kind enough to send me a few statements when I explained the matter to them, especially after I pointed out that it could soon be an investigation if someone used your credit cards to drain your account. You've made a few deposits and withdrawals into your checking account since August, but nothing that would indicate regular employ. It looks more like the income of someone living off odd jobs. You have some five hundred dollars to your name, sitting there waiting for you once you convince the bank they're yours and they issue you with new cards."

"Oh really?" Kaku asked, sounding pleased while thinking, 'Wow, all of five hundred dollars. Not too generous, are we, Chang.' They'd never fixed the amount that was going to land in Kaku's lap along with his papers, that would have been a little too close to an actual contract for Chang's taste, so Kaku had left it up to his definitely-not-employer. Maybe he should have negotiated a little more.

"So...that's about it." Shao slapped his rounded thighs under the neatly cut slacks. His eyes still hadn't left Kaku, but part of his scrutiny could perhaps be attributed to his next question rather than suspicion of that blank slate of a past. "Does any of this ring a bell? Trigger anything? I read somewhere that amnesia can go away in a blink."

"That's a misconception," said Yoshio absently. He was studying the ID page of Kaku's passport. "Large chunks of memory can come back, but it's not an all-or-nothing process and in complete cases like this, there's always some areas that are never recovered, along with language skills or motor control if they're been affected. Reeducation can address some of these, but vocabulary loss, behavioral changes and other impairments can remain."

"That's right, you're a doctor." 

Yoshio looked up with a touch of discomfiture at having corrected the other man at such lengths. "No, I'm an MRI specialist at St. Xavier's lab, my medical degree is in biotech research, but I, um, did some research. Into amnesia. When I met him. Kaku-...uh, Karl? Are you okay?"

"Huh? Oh, no, please, call me Kaku. I mean, this is my passport, that's my picture, but..."

"Name doesn't ring a bell?" Shao asked. "Pity..." Then he looked surprised as Yoshio suddenly laughed. It sounded a little shaky but honestly amused. 

"Oh, sorry. It's just- Karl Crandall. Right?"

Both Shao and Kaku stared at him until Yoshio explained.

"If you grew up in Japan, there's no way your friends in school could manage to say that mouthful in any way you'd recognize. I'd wondered where on earth you'd picked up a name like Kaku, but it was probably a nickname due to- um...it sort of sounds like your name," Yoshio finished, studiously not looking at Kaku's nose. Shao, who was of Chinese origin and didn't speak Japanese, looked blank. "But we can call you Karl, now."

"I'd rather you call me Kaku."

"But that's not your real name."

"It's the one that stayed with me," Kaku pointed out, closing the passport carefully. "Maybe it was a nickname to start with," and it had been at that, a handle he'd picked up before he was two years old in an orphanage on the Grand Line so far away, "but it seems I've kept it, and it's what stayed with me when everything else disappeared. I feel more comfortable with it."

Shao did the shrug again and stood up. "Well, if you don’t want to press charges for the alleged assault, and if you don't have any further questions...I'll leave you with this list I made, of things I've checked and things you can check in your turn. Something more might turn up. Hire a private detective, maybe. I have a friend who went into that line. Give me a call once all this has sunk in, and I'll give you his number. Good luck either way, Mr. Crandall. Mr Odari, can I talk to you for a minute? You can walk me out."

Kaku pretended to pour over the information Shao had left on the coffee table, but his attention was with the detective and Yoshio, talking quietly right outside the front door. Shao's voice was too low, but Kaku knew what he was saying, and he couldn’t blame the detective for it. Hell, if he were in Shao's position, he'd probably consider it his duty to warn a decent guy like Yoshio that another strong possibility for the grey areas in Kaku's past was criminal activity, bringing up a lot of questions and potential risk. 

But Kaku had been here long enough to know that Shao was wasting his time, and that Kaku would not be sleeping under a bridge tonight, or any time soon. He'd gotten his claws into Yoshio, the same way he was coming to grips with this society. The passport was solid in his hands, a link to this new world, like his awkward-but-improving grasp of the language. Kaku wondered why it made him feel all the more isolated. 

He didn't pay as much heed as he should to the door closing with a firm click. Yoshio's voice dragged him out of his contemplation.

"Hey, you okay? Man, of course you aren't, you're completely stunned. So am I."

Kaku wasn't stunned. An agent couldn't afford to be affected by events. He was staring at a piece of cardboard and paper, thinking of his next steps, and putting well behind him the memory of a bloody grip on someone's throat, of a dying gurgle, of a woman's screams as she found her husband or lover or trick with his throat ripped out...

"Yeah...I just..." The hesitation was entirely fake. Kaku had had this speech ready for days. "I thought once I learned my identity...everything would fall into place. You know? But this name means nothing to me." And boy did he not like it, 'Karl Crandall' was a goofy name to his ears, but it was the only common one he'd found that was faintly similar to his own. "It turns out I don't have a place, a family...I don't know what to do now, where to go..."

That dangled out there like a baited hook on the end of a line.

"You can put your healthcare to use to start with, and give Gilchrist and therapy a chance," Yoshio answered promptly. "You won't have to pay for your BC health insurance since you're unemployed. I think. Though you'll probably have a mountain of paperwork to hike over. Mr. Adiba will tell us how to get a claim through in this instance. As for family - man, I think Shao really didn't do his job too well. I know finding your past isn't exactly his province, but how about helping a human being in need? We'll write to Kobe, to the embassy, to wherever, and I'm sure you'll find something. As for a place to live, if you don't mind that couch, you can stay here as long as you like, you know that."

"What? Oh, but I can't impose-"

Yoshio argued him down after a few minutes. "And if you feel that guilty about it," he finally added, "when we go out to celebrate this tomorrow night - and we are definitely going to celebrate, this is one hell of a breakthrough. So, as I was saying, when we go out to celebrate, we can drop by your bank first, get your visa card or whatever and then you can pay for dinner. Deal?"

"Deal," said Kaku, claws sinking in deeper, nestling in further like the parasite he was. Yoshio was really too kind.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As in a lot of my fics, time moves forward abruptly. I could write a thousand pages on Kaku's discovery of our world, but the story would get lost in its own details. So this moves on to a few months down the road. The chapter is very short, flowing from a small non-incident that's just one intermediate step in the story's progress.

Kaku had been indifferent to the syncopated melodies invading this planet's every corner. He didn't have a musical ear and little interest in arts that didn't involve the word 'martial'. Not that he'd let that become apparent. Kaku had been taught to hold any number of wise or entertaining discourses on all forms of art at the drop of a hat, even the half-assed piss-paint-on-the-canvas stuff Yoshio had shown him in a museum last month. Kaku the Infiltrator had pretended quite successfully to be interested, even impressed (Kaku the art critic had reevaluated the gullibility of the people on this planet who were willing to pay cold cash for this). The only art a CP9 agent was ever passionate about was the art of murder...though in his heart of hearts and after so many years on Water 7, Kaku had developed an appreciation for the taut lines and graceful curves of sailing ships, particularly Galley-La's. During the four months he'd been lost in this strange land, nostalgia and a need for solitude had led him to Vancouver's marina on a couple of occasions to look at the ships at anchor there, though they were like too many things in this world, angled and functional and made of metal.

As for this world's overly loud music, he'd paid it no mind, and had expended no energy trying to decipher what the singers were muttering or crooning or bellowing about. But the little booklet that came with the disk was open on the coffee table that day, words tempting Kaku to indulge his voracious appetite to learn as much vocabulary as he could.

After some time spent reading the text and picking out sentence structure, the meaning had percolated through. The next twenty minutes were spent with a dictionary and a sense of growing disbelief as he put the picture together with what he'd learned about the political system of legislature, police, non-interventionary military etc. Finally he'd cracked and gone to ask Yoshi just why the hell he was listening to music that could only be termed anarchist, and that was being polite.

Yoshi thought that was very funny and ever so slightly annoying, and didn't bother to conceal either emotion, the mask of reserve having crumbled by imperceptible stages since their first meeting until it was barely there any more. He barely glanced at the lyrics Kaku was pointing at and returned to stripping down one of the lab's broken voltmeters on the kitchen table; the parts would become a school project for his nephew (the son of the younger sister, the one who was still talking to him, not the other one). 

"It's just music."

"But they're promoting civil disobedience, at best." Kaku's voice was growing a bit plaintive. He _knew_ Yoshi was a good citizen to a fault, the kind who would never even dream of cheating on his taxes.

"If you don't like Pennywise, don't listen to them," Yoshi said casually, "and just be glad I don't play System of a Down all day long, like Mike did," he added in a mutter that Kaku, who'd been exiting the kitchen, was probably not supposed to catch. Mike was the ex, the one whose clothes Kaku had worn on his first days here, and part of the reason Yoshi treated all relationships beyond professional like bear traps.

Kaku wandered off with the feeling he was on the edge of committing a faux pas, but not sure why. As usual, his first instinct was to not stir the water. It was an infiltrator's reflex. Be pleasant, be agreeing, contradict only when it will amuse or validate the other, else shut up, watch, listen and keep your judgment to yourself. Instant 'best friend' recipe. It'd gotten him this far. Gratitude, and the fact that Yoshio was an easy person to get along with once his reserve was breached helped make Kaku's attitude a little less a lie, or so he told himself.

He did owe Yoshio a lot. Observing his friend had taught Kaku so many things. This world, with its bewildering similarities to his own, had an overwhelming amount of differences too, ways of doing things and even thinking that were alien to Kaku. There'd been days since his arrival four months ago when, despite his well-trained mind, he thought for sure his brain was going to be squeezed out his ears like jelly as he tried to make room for one more fact, one more deduction, one more thing the inhabitants of this world took for granted and that could trip him up and expose him if he wasn't careful. Yoshio had been his lifeline, and still was. Observing his friend had taught Kaku how to use a phone, shop in a supermarket, pay with a credit card, cross the street without having to use Soru, fasten the Velcro straps of sneakers and turn on the microwave - though with that latter, there _had_ been that little accident...When observation and analysis failed, Yoshio would attribute the blindingly stupid mistakes Kaku made to the amnesia, and kindly explain why making hard boiled eggs in the microwave was a bad idea, for instance, or why it was preferable to go through the process of obtaining a license rather than learning to drive a car through trial and error. Most importantly, Yoshi had persuaded Mr. Adiba, the hospital's accounts manager, of Kaku's need for help and had roped the bean-counter in when it came to filling in all the paperwork that gave Kaku a 'real' existence in this world. That collective work had been as priceless as it had been boring, and Yoshio had stuck with it all the way. Kaku would not have found this much forbearance in a shelter, or a depersonalized condo. There would always have been the curious or the suspicious who would have caught him out these first vulnerable months. He'd be in a madhouse or perpetually on the run from puzzled yet hostile police forces by now, he was certain. 

Yoshio - relaxed to 'Yoshi', a family nickname he'd asked Kaku to use one night where he'd had three Japanese beers in a bar after work - had given him an address, a reference, a cover story, as well as a friend, someone to talk to, relax around and a pretty pleasant guy to live with, if a bit of a hermit and a slob. Kaku was no longer entirely sure which set of reasons was why he was staying put, and he didn’t bother to think about it much, really. Why should he, as long as he was comfortable?

But in this instance, it did sort of matter. An infiltrator wouldn't rock the boat over some faint anarchist leanings, while a friend would consider it his duty to show Yoshio that this was a contradiction, and possibly the slippery slope to moral compromise, to a fundamental disrespect of authority. That statement would lead to a political discussion, and Kaku knew very well they'd fundamentally disagree there. Yoshio was a pacifist and a liberal, the fluffy kind-hearted variety which Kaku rather liked, because they'd give the dissatisfied a harmless focal point, while radicalizing and marginalizing the more violent elements who could then be easily picked off in convenient 'accidents'-

But that was a different world. 

Here, Kaku was no longer the weapon for justice and order in the shadow of the World Government; he was the roommate. He cooked every other evening and helped with as much rent as he could on his salary of a dishwasher at St. Xavier, the starter job Yoshio had helped him find. He'd have to look for something better soon, something more in line with his abilities, once he figured out how the latter could be applied in this world. He thought his skills as a shipwright or martial artist might get him somewhere. The _other_ set of skills would be kept in reserve...

Cleaning the hospital cafeteria, running the huge dishwashers and helping the orderlies was a boring occupation, but it gave him a growing grasp of social interaction and language as well as a more regular income than the gym. The only downside was that it put him in frequent contact with Gilchrist, who still longed to get him into therapy and who assumed his refusal of same was part of some pathology...but he'd mastered enough English to fob her off with his usual artistry. Despite its drawbacks and low income, the job allowed him to pay for the organic food he still ate when he could. At least he did not have the appearances of a parasite to Yoshio. In fact, his friend had been appalled at the very notion that Kaku might want to pay half the rent when he'd already taken over most of the cleaning and was constantly putting his back at risk by sleeping on the old, sagging couch.

Two days after that comment, they'd pitched in together, fifty-fifty, and invested in a better sleeper couch. That had been Kaku's official promotion to roommate. 

Kaku realized he'd sat down on the couch in question, and was absently tapping his cheek with the CD case. He tossed it down on the low table. The decision to leave the water further unstirred was made just as unceremoniously and without further self-examination. The point was moot, Yoshi couldn't even bear to park in a handicapped zone or toss litter anywhere other than a trashcan, the chances that he'd take up arms against his government and burn anything down soon were extremely remote. The very thought made Kaku smile as his mind wandered. 

...What was the name of his first instructor? That question had been bothering him for a couple of days now. It had popped into his mind for no reason he could discern, and wouldn't leave again. A small detail he'd probably forgotten long before now. He'd mainly known the man as 'Sensei', and Sensei had been left far behind well over a decade ago. But now the question lingered in him as a sense of unease that he was forgetting home.

He kept seeing his instructor as he'd seen him so frequently when he'd gone to the old man's room to get extra assignments: sitting at his low desk and inkstand - the man was a traditionalist to the bone - as he endlessly polished his two katana. He'd been the one to get Kaku interested in swords, an interest that the child had later developed alongside the more extreme applications of Rokushiki. 

Sensei had been left with only one eye and one leg in a battle against pirates a few years before Kaku was even born. He'd been an excellent teacher, instilling discipline and devotion to the cause of peace, order and justice in all his pupils. He'd polished his useless weapons routinely as if he might still grab them up at a moment's notice and go defeat more pirates. Kaku had never thought about it before, but the gesture was kind of pathetic in a way. The thought mildly scandalized him; he owed the man immensely, as much as he owed the agent from Central Administrations who'd made the call that day... 

Young Kaku had been sweating after showing off his mettle - all four foot eight of it - to the Man from Central in charge of government education and sponsorships. He'd not wiped it from his brow, but stood at attention as he'd been taught. Sensei had said in the spring of that year that he'd be recommending Kaku for a government scholarship to CP8's training school, because they had a good Ops and Intervention branch. The orphan had worked hard at both his schooling and his martial forms to deserve this excellent placement, showing a determination rare in someone his age. It had changed his instructor's mind, and the old man had been formulating the plan of using his connections to get Kaku enlisted into the Marines Officer School instead of the government, because he thought Kaku could even make it into the Specials after the Naval Academy. 

But the Man from Central had disagreed. "The Specials? Yeah, sure, I guess that's an option. But did you see his psychological profile?"

"Of course I did, I wrote most of it myself." Sensei, who'd been the very one to teach Kaku to be dispassionate, analytical and all that, had let a certain amount of heat slip through the mask as he defended his best student. "He's the epitome of manners, obedience and loyalty, he-"

"He better be, but I meant his intelligence, man, his solutions finding skills. Factored down to his age, he's too good to put in a uniform, even a Specials one. No, we're keeping him. He's going to the government training facility on Enies Lobby and from there on, if he's got anywhere near the grit you think he does, we're signing him up for CP9." 

Kaku had never heard of CP9, not having anywhere near the security clearance to even know the name, but he'd heard enough right then and there. Better than CP8, better than the Marines. Better than the _Specials_. CP9. The look of unveiled pride on his instructor's face lit a fire in the eleven-year-old's heart that had never gone out.

"Dinner."

Kaku jumped, the couch scraping back as he jarred it.

"Oops, sorry, didn't mean to startle you." Yoshi put plates on the low table and sat down, grabbing the remote. "You looked like you were a million miles away."

"Considerably more, I think," Kaku muttered, picking up his fork and toying with his instant rice.

...Don't stir the water...

He forced himself to smile. After a few seconds it came more naturally as Yoshi found a movie with a lot of guns and amusingly unconvincing violence for them to watch.


	6. Chapter 6

The way Yoshi shut the door made it clear he longed to slam it, but he was too used to coming home at all hours of the night from his shift and minding the neighbors to give in to the impulse. 

"I apologize for that," he said stiffly. Why he thought it necessary to apologize when the incident hadn't been his fault and he'd been insulted as well was beyond Kaku, but it was the sort of thing Yoshi would do.

Kaku glanced from the shut door to his friend. "What did that word mean?" he asked, in the Trade-Japanese-English mix that'd evolved between them in the six months Kaku had lived here. "The last one she threw at us? Fu-"

" _Don't_ \- say it. Please." 

"Right. What does it mean?"

"Same as the rest." Yoshio tossed down his briefcase and lowered his computer bag to the floor with a bit more absent care. "Just forget it, okay?"

"Sure," Kaku said easily, having no intention to. He'd already filed the insults away for further study. All knowledge was useful. "So, what was that about?"

From the way Yoshi twitched, the violent self-contained shudder of a horse feeling a hornet, Kaku wondered if he should wait a day before digging further. But he was curious. He'd missed the start of the argument, since he'd been getting some old weights he'd scored at the gym out of the car while Yoshi had gone ahead. He'd walked up the stairwell just as Yoshi's retiring tone started to rise in volume. The landlady was always shrill, but when Kaku had turned the corner she'd been in full vent. It sounded like a good deal of pent-up feelings bursting their dam because she'd caught Yoshio alone. Kaku was always exquisitely polite to Mrs. Clancy, but something about him made her nervous. 

But if she thought she could lay into Yoshi and have him take it meekly just because Kaku wasn't there, she had another think coming. Yoshi didn't match her volume or output, but he gave as good as he got, not even noticing Kaku until the latter reached them. Kaku hadn't followed the argument, but he'd caught Yoshio using the words 'lawsuit' and 'civil rights', and he knew enough about this world to spot a winner. The landlady had gone blotchy red, opening and closing her mouth like a snapper turtle. She spat out a few words in a near-hysterical voice - the ones that Kaku had assiduously memorized - gripped her electric blue vinyl sweater to her bosom as if she suspected they might try to take advantage of her, spun on her heels and left with what she might have hoped was some dignity. Kaku hadn't had a chance to figure out what the blowup was about or say anything. 

"That-..." Yoshio caught his own words as if they were sour on his tongue.

"Bitch. You can say it, I think you're entitled." The words Kaku had understood had been vicious and denigrating. "Why is your sexuality her problem?"

"Where you come from, it doesn't seem to be a problem at all," Yoshio muttered. An odd thing to say, Kaku noted at the far back of his mind...probably just irritation at Kaku's eternal refusal to let idiots and their issues get to him. 

Kaku sat down on his couch, the box of weights at his feet. They were much too light for him, but he was planning to gently needle Yoshio into picking up a training routine. His friend was only twenty-eight and already developing a slouch from working at a bench and desk all day. He needed more core strength. Like that he could punch their landlady and not hurt himself.

"I know how differences bring out the worst in people," said Kaku, idly checking he hadn't lost any of the bolts and screws in the trunk. "It's one of human nature's most reliable and least likeable constants. I've seen it happen any number of times. But why is this bugging her now? She knew I was living here for the past six months, and she's known about you for even longer."

"Before she got abusive, she said one of the neighbors complained. Something about making noise, and I'm sure she didn't mean the bloody stereo. Hello! We're just roommates!" Yoshi said, raising his voice for the benefit of the four walls around them. "What can they be complaining about?"

"Maybe that's what they're complaining about. Lack of vicarious thrills."

Yoshi muttered something indistinct and went back to circling the carpet.

"I pay my rent on the nose every month, I even help her take down her- why are you laughing?! This is not funny!"

"It's not the situation that's funny, it's you."

Yoshi shoved back the fine hair falling over his eyes and gave Kaku a prickly look. "What?"

"Seriously, look at you," said Kaku, with a wave of his palm. "You're about to kick her door down and insist she apologize."

"Well, no, but-"

"A few months ago, when Hussein asked you if I was your boyfriend, you locked up like a bank vault." 

"I did not," said Yoshio automatically, but then his eyes turned inward and he stopped pacing. "Well...that's not the same thing. Having some guy and a bevy of his friends implying that I'm gay is potentially a serious problem, but having that- that old bag asking- no, insulting me- us! That's different. I'm entitled to feel annoyed."

"You're entitled to feel bloody furious. I just think you're handling it in a more positive way, is all." Kaku leaned back into the couch, hands behind his head, and grinned proudly. It was a fact that Yoshi was a good deal less timorous these days. Oh, he was always polite, painfully so - Kaku had by now gathered it was cultural - but he could hold his own in these kind of situations now, and maybe Kaku was flattering himself but he saw this as his good influence. The infiltrator knew the value of discretion, but he also knew you never got anywhere if you let people walk all over you, and some of his cheerful resilience had rubbed off on his roommate. 

Yoshio tried hard not to look pleased at Kaku's comment. He didn't approve of aggression or showing too much emotion in public, even though he must have enjoyed the look on Mrs. Clancy's face. He let himself fall into the other side of the couch with a sigh.

"That was unpleasant...I didn't expect that at all. Are you okay? Yeah, of course you are," he added with a roll of his eyes as Kaku laughed again. "Nothing ever gets to you, does it."

"Within limits. I don't care if she gets vinegary, she can draw hexes on our door and spit on the ground we walk on-"

"I'd rather she didn't do that, actually," said Yoshi, giving him a strange look.

"-but is she likely to do anything more concrete?"

"Concrete? Like what? Oh, no. Jesus, no. I mean, I doubt it, I don't think she's got the guts. If we lived in a country where they can stone you for this, she'd denounce us in a second and attend the execution, but right here in Vancouver? No, she'd never risk anything that might get her sued. Or have the city look more closely at this roach-infested building her husband is supposed to keep running. I don't think she's that hacked about it anyway. Some kids must have knocked over the garbage cans again and she took it out on us. No, I expect nothing more concrete than dirty looks and losing our parcels and misdirecting repairmen and saying bad stuff about us to the neighbors." The flush of anger was passing and now he was starting to look depressed, gaze avoiding Kaku, the unlit TV, the door, and escaping towards the window.

"That's her look-out. If it gets too annoying, we can always move out."

Kaku's casual suggestion dropped between them like one of the ten-kilo weights. 

...There had been a time when Kaku had watched everything he said. For five long years on Water 7, he'd screened every word that left his mouth, the consummate actor twenty four seven, with never a slip of the tongue to betray himself, his colleagues or his mission. It wasn't like him to make this kind of blunder. 

"Right. Move out," said Yoshi, staring at his knees. 

Kaku glanced around the apartment which had sheltered him for six months now, possibly saving his life in the process, and wondered if he'd just turned himself out on the street. His status of roommate was tenuous at best. Yoshi knew him well enough now to acknowledge that Kaku could rough it anywhere if he had to, so helping out a poor amnesia victim no longer cut it as a reason for co-habitation. As for Yoshi, he'd not needed a roommate before and he didn't need one now. Their comfortable arrangement had been fine as long as it remained unquestioned, and Kaku's thoughtless remark had just shoved it under a microscope. 

An agent of Kaku's caliber could read the thoughts going through Yoshi's mind as if they were painted across his forehead. Unwittingly, Kaku and the landlady had combined forces to confront Yoshio with a decision that had been hovering around him for awhile. Kaku had felt the slow ebb and tide of his friend's feelings washing around him. He now watched Yoshi with morbid curiosity, wondering if the man would actually have the courage to say it, or if he'd just clam up and let it slide and hide away, like he tended to since his problems with his family, his ex and all that crap.

Twice, Yoshi drew a breath as if about to say something and then changed his mind. Kaku nudged the box of weights at his foot. Metal clinked. As if that was a minding bell, Yoshi looked up quickly and then back down at his hands. "Um, do you want to c-come live with me if I move?"

Far, far at the back of Kaku's mind, the infiltrator muttered that he should be leery of getting close to anyone without good mission-related reasons, but Kaku impulsively decided to ignore it. What possible harm could this do? He was tired of being alone. Tired of thinking. Tired of pretending to be a man he wasn't for reasons that barely applied to this situation in which he was adrift. Just this once, for a tiny interval of time, he just wanted to...not think...

Yoshio was still bungled up in an attempt to elaborate that what he'd meant was not living together as roommates, he'd not explained himself right, he hoped Kaku wasn't going to be offended, he valued their friendship too highly, he always would, but-

"Yes."

"Wh-what? Oh, you want to move in with me again?" Yoshio was looking more harrowed now than when he'd been facing the landlady. "Uh, Kaku, I made a hash of it, but what I really meant-"

"Yes. To the question you really meant."

"You-...uh..."

"You don't need a roommate, Yoshi. You make enough money to have your own place, and a better one than this too. And I don't need anyone holding my hand to cross the street anymore. We've not been living together because either of us needed to for awhile now."

Which was the truth...the _other_ truth lurked behind it, the truth that involved cover stories, survival and lies as large as Vancouver, but that truth was so big it didn't fit into this moment, this small, human moment Kaku was allowing himself to take.

Yoshi stared at him and Kaku could have sworn, with his grasp of human behavior, that his friend was going to talk about this, a lot, and even try to talk them out of what he wanted in his typically retrenched and convoluted way. But in that he was wrong. An odd expression flickered across Yoshi's face and then he'd crossed the distance between them and reached for Kaku as if he didn’t want to think about it any further either.

The kiss started out tentative until Kaku tilted his head and let his lips part, hand resting on Yoshio's shoulder and holding him close, and after a few heartbeats Yoshi was kissing him with something like desperation. Kaku took it, molded it, gave it back...Poor Yoshi must have been harder up than estimated, it'd been unkind to let the poor guy hang for so long without some indication that advances wouldn't be unwelcome. Kaku could feel warmth pouring through his body, pooling in his lap where he'd pulled his friend...hmmm, just why the hell _had_ he waited so long...?

The kiss broke into smaller ones, melded again, finally petered out as Yoshi leaned back, breathless. He blinked, just noticing at that point that Kaku had pulled him astraddle. A solid red flush and a moment of hesitation, but he didn't pull away, or seem to mind when Kaku's hands drifted down his shoulder to caress his back. Kaku was acquainted with the courtship rituals of this world through TV, but hopefully a lot of that could be skipped; he and Yoshi had been going out for dinner and movies for awhile already. 

"Do you want to go give the neighbors something to actually be scandalized about?" he whispered. 

"Oh, thanks for reminding me," Yoshio laughed, and the small moment of uncertainty vanished. The way his fingers slipped down the back of Kaku's collar to caress skin was more than an answer.

He went 'whoa!' when Kaku lifted him up effortlessly from the couch. "Damn-" Yoshi laughed again, final walls tumbling down. This moment, new and free, was already as intimate as the one they'd soon be sharing in the bedroom. "I forgot how stupidly strong you are. Put me down, you nutcase, you're going to hurt your back."

"Nonsense."

"What are you saying, that I'm a lightweight?" 

"You’d have to work out before you made lightweight, right now I'd put you at bantam."

That cheeky answer got him a punch in the shoulder and a kiss on the corner of the jaw as he negotiated the coffee table. 

"I am not a lightweight, you're the one who can bench-press stupid numbers. Put me down, you idiot." But Yoshi's lack of anything but for-the-form wiggling indicated he didn't really mind this at all, and neither did Kaku. He didn't hurry his way towards the bedroom, tarrying along the way for a good-natured kiss and grope with maybe just a bit of showing off thrown in for good measure. His body was the one thing he still had that was thoroughly his, and he was damn proud of it. With Lucci, strength had always been a clash, an exhilarating challenge, but here it could be used to pamper and protect.

"Wait, wait up." Yoshi grabbed the lintel in passing.

"Hmm?"

The flush on golden skin wasn't only excitement as Yoshi licked his lips, gaze shying away. "There's just something we need to, ah, agree on."

"I'll let you do the honors," Kaku generously declared. He'd always liked it both ways, or indeed any way, and in this instance it felt only fair to give Yoshi a small reward for having been able to overcome his diffidence and niggling fear of intimacy that bastard ex-lover of his had left him with. Though Kaku would be just as happy with a handjob, he wasn't difficult and hey, he'd been celibate for a while now.

Yoshio's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, the flush more pronounced. "Um, thanks, but that's not what I meant. I meant, I believe in safe sex. You see."

"...Good." Kaku's mind dropped several levels of anticipation and recklessness down to warier zones. Safe sex sounded good, better than dangerous sex, but that should have gone without saying. He was missing something here, something Yoshio expected him to get. Matters weren't helped by Yoshi saying 'safe sex' in English rather than their hybrid Japanese, but Kaku didn’t know how to get his friend to translate without betraying his incomprehension. 

It turned out to be just condoms he was talking about, which Kaku wasn't familiar with but at least knew about. Yoshi was long habituated to Kaku's sudden moments of extreme denseness, and patiently explained how to use them. 

Yoshi's body was soft, delicate...Kaku slipped a starched work shirt from rounded shoulders, fingertips brushing skin, and thought a little ironically that 'safe sex' was more a question of reminding himself this wasn’t someone he could unleash his strength on, rather than a little rubber tube. His fingers drifted down a back unblemished by scars, little shivers running ahead of his touch. Yoshi squirmed away with a ticklish shrug and reached for the belt of Kaku's jeans.

Kaku ran his fingers through black hair so fine it parted before them like water, instead of snaring them in a rough, dark mane...He had had several lovers throughout his adventurous life, perforce never for very long, and these comparisons crept in every time. As if Lucci had found a soft spot in Kaku's hardened soul and imprinted himself there, to be the standard to which all others failed to measure. Kaku didn't _think_ Lucci had done this on purpose, though if he could have, he would certainly have loved it, the bastard. Kaku had learned to move past that and enjoy the now, in this as in so many things, whether the lovers were mission incidents or picked up and treated as considerately as possible when he and Lucci were not available for each other. Any port in a storm, any pleasure snatched from lives violent and short, once shared by one who was now so far away.

Yoshi moved like someone who wasn't particularly proud of his body, but his hands were clever, and he knew what to do with them. Kaku let him take the lead, still a little wary of committing other blunders. But there weren't any more surprises, it was predictable, gentle and good, and he'd not been able to relax and enjoy himself for what felt like way too long on this world.

The sheet had been shoved aside and the blanket was on the floor. The late afternoon outside was giving way to evening. A few more hours and it'd be time for bed. Kaku wondered where he was going to sleep tonight. He had a feeling it'd be right here, and hey, there was nothing wrong with that. If he never spent another night on that couch, he'd have no complaints. Thoughts drifted idly through his mind the way his hand drifted over Yoshi's back and head as it rested on Kaku's shoulder. The heat between them had cooled, but not the warmth. This felt...really nice. Nothing like it. 

"Kaku...?" 

Hmmwhat? Pillow talk? Well, it wasn't his forte, but Kaku didn't mind it, unlike a certain partner of his who would have been out of bed like a scalded cat at the first sign that-

"You're not... really from Japan. Are you..."

Kaku's eyes opened wide, a stare directed straight at the ceiling.

"What?" 

"You-" Yoshi's voice disappeared in a croak. He disentangled himself and sat up on the edge of the bed, his back towards Kaku. The cords of his wrist stood out as his hands gripped the edge of the mattress. "You...um, you don't...you don't have amnesia any more...do you..."

Kaku felt alarm, of course, and his well-trained mind went hunting for cause and countermeasures, but at the back of it all was a certain measure of indignation. The words 'You choose to say this _now_?' were almost out of his mouth, though he was too professional to let them slip. Still, he'd been open and honest here, well, as open and honest as he ever got outside Enies Lobby, that is. He'd taken this decision to get closer to Yoshi with absolutely no underhanded intentions at all - and it turned out that Yoshio was the one who might have had an agenda? Kaku knew perfectly well his feelings were utterly hypocritical, but there are few people who can feel quite so ticked off at being lied to than a liar.

"Why on earth do you say that?" he asked, tamping down his emotions and choosing his tone carefully; not quite so incredulous that he couldn't back out on it if Yoshi had some real cards with which to call his bluff.

"Why? Why?" Yoshio made a gesture that suddenly looked a little hysterical, and Kaku could almost hear the veneer of trust and belief crack. "Your past- the stuff you know- the stuff you _don't_ know is just too weird! I don't know! You don't speak Japanese! Not like someone who grew up there. Even now, you make totally bizarre mistakes. And you don't speak English either, not like a native, but you learned it so fast- It doesn't make _sense_ but you don't have amnesia any more because you only talk about remembering new things when I mention it these days and you don't really care that those letters you sent to Japan never came back-"

"Whoa." Kaku put his hand on Yoshi's back to calm him down. It was shaken off. Now that they'd been openly expressed, Yoshi's gnawing doubts were taking great big bites. 

"-and I don't know but I do, you just- it's stupid and I'm _crazy_ for even thinking this, but that's just it, one of us is and I know you too darn well now, I've never seen anyone so smart and- and collected, you-"

Kaku the CP9 agent knew about this phenomenon; it'd been dubbed Cumulative Erosion by a wag in his training course on infiltration. People overall were surprisingly trusting if you didn't give them reason to be otherwise. They went along with all sorts of lies - especially those backed up by official-looking paperwork and a disarming smile - and even if they later noted some incongruity, they would find all sorts of reasons to support the falsehood rather than admit to themselves they'd been duped. The few who were born naturally suspicious were easy to spot and avoid; the rest of the human population was an infiltrator's bread and butter. But one had to be careful. A minority of these gullible souls had a little man inside who was as suspicious as a custom's official who'd just smelled something fragrant from a box that should contain nothing but spare engine parts. They swallowed the lies without a fuss, but let tiny, almost unnoticed crumbs of doubt accumulate, building and building until one day they opened their eyes and saw the world in an entirely different light. They might still turn a blind eye to their own revelation for awhile, but not forever from that point onwards. And from there on out, they were a trap waiting to catch the unsuspecting agent as soon as he put any kind of pressure on them, such as casually asking them for confidential information, imposing on their friendship...or falling into bed with them. Yeah, that last was a classic. Suddenly small inconsistencies one was willing to overlook in a friend became huge, insurmountable in a lover, and doubt snowballed until it swept through everything. There'd been warning flags; Yoshio hadn't mentioned the amnesia for over a month now as if skirting an awkward subject, and certain turn of phrases he used...Kaku should have noticed, should have seen the signs which in hindsight were blinding, but he'd completely missed them, forgot to even look for them, bloody stupid- 

Of course a mission usually had prep work and background stories that avoided any doubt. Unless it was an infiltration on the fly, in which case the target was capped in a matter of weeks and doubt never had the time to accumulate anyway. Kaku's arrival and seat-of-the-pants infiltration was definitely of the 'on the fly' category, and he should not have stayed in one place or let his cover story attend to itself for six whole months like that. No agent should remain stationary that long unless his background was rock solid. Damn it, five years on Water 7 and he'd never slipped up this badly.

...But back there, he'd known from the start he'd have to kill Iceburg sooner or later, and betray them all in the end, and of course, he'd had Lucci. Lucci...There'd never been any doubt who was the enemy and who was on his side when the latter was Lucci. Who the hell did he have on his side here? Apart from Yoshi, maybe?

Time to put that to the test. He'd lose Yoshio either way if he failed, and as for fallout outside their relation, he could always deny this conversation had ever happened.

"So what do you think is going on?" he asked neutrally, testing the waters. The fluffy idiot who'd thrown caution to the wind earlier was well and truly gone. The agent was fully back in control. 

"I-..." and then Yoshio clammed up, obviously too embarrassed at his own notion to utter it out loud. Just because he knew Kaku wasn’t what he seemed didn't mean he'd guessed the truth. How could he. The world had just tipped on its axis, established reality had popped like a balloon and the first wild theory available was going to rush in to fill the vacuum. 

"Well?" Kaku prompted when Yoshio did nothing but hunch over and grip the edge of the mattress. 

"I-...I don't know-...Why are you- do you still have amnesia or not?! It doesn't matter what I think! Have you been _lying_ to me?!" Yoshio shot off the bed, and then wrestled the top sheet off to wrap around his waist.

"I don't have amnesia. I never had."

Yoshio's jaw dropped.

"Oh my god," he said weakly, when Kaku didn't add anything.

"I'm sorry I lied to you. I really had no choice-"

"Are you some kind of- of s-spy?" Yoshio stuttered, his voice in the upper register and climbing.

Oh, so that's what he thought? Hardly a likely explanation, but one that superficially fit the facts and would be inspired by the books and movies Yoshio liked. It was more rational than the truth at any rate.

"No, I'm not a spy." Technically this was not entirely true, but true enough under the circumstances. 

Yoshio had shocked himself by blurting that out; it must have sounded pretty crazy even to his own ears. Kaku's calm answer brought the hysteria factor down a little. 

"...You're a...criminal? You're trying to get away from, um, your past or something?" 

"Do you really think it'd be smart for a man on the lam to pretend to have amnesia, get the cops involved, give his fingerprints, everything? Not very discreet."

"But..."

"But what's going on then? You tell me, Yoshi. How would you explain someone who speaks only one of your languages, very badly at that? Who got brought to St Xavier out of nowhere with no identity, no traces of his existence whatsoever? Who doesn't know what a skyscraper is, or telephones or computers or even enough to avoid trucks on the highway? Don't you remember what I was like six months ago? A week after you took me in I tried to unscrew the electrical outlet with a kitchen knife to see if I could find the power source. You barely stopped me in time from getting electrocuted. Remember?"

Yoshi gaped, bowled over as incidents that had been dismissed at the time under the handy umbrella of brain damage took on new significance. But that wasn't going to make the truth any easier to take. Kaku measured just how crazy his next words were going to sound and nearly gave up.

"The truth is, I don't know where I come from. In relation to here, that is. A friend of mine has- had an ability to open doorways into thin air between two locations. There was an accident while we were traveling that way once, and I ended up here. But I don't belong here." Something lodged in Kaku's throat, a sudden small ache. He cleared it with a cough. 

After a whole ten seconds during which Kaku waited for a reaction, Yoshi said, "What?"

"I'm not from your world. I come from somewhere quite different, with more oceans, less people, and our technology is about a hundred years behind yours."

"...Are you making fun of me...?"

"No."

"No, you're not." Yoshi was shaking, Kaku could hear it in his voice. "You're perfectly serious. You actually believe this."

"I don't believe this, I _know_ it. At least now you can see why I lied to you. It wasn't as if you'd have believed me anyway. You or anybody here."

He didn't think Yoshio had been listening. "...um...Kaku...um..."

"What? I need help? Is that what you're trying to say? Are you finding a diplomatic way of telling me I'm a psychotic who fabricated an entire imaginary planet to feed his delusions?"

Yoshi's gaze broke away and nailed itself to the floor. "I didn't say that," he whispered. He sounded scared. Kaku didn't blame him. But the swell of feelings inside didn't bother to make a stopover by reasonableness, and went straight to his mouth.

"If you can find any other rational explanations for the inconsistencies in my knowledge, feel free to tell me. I'd be curious to know, trust me, it's been hard enough living here with this bloody amnesia crap as only cover." Yoshi flinched but Kaku kept right on talking. "Yes, you're right, I didn't remember my English. I learned it here on the fly. I am considerably smarter than you've even realized. I've been lost and confused and fucking bewildered ever since I got here but I've been trained to-...This won't make sense to you, but I had a job back home, a sort of- of undercover police job, I'm good at adapting and getting along in new situations. Back home I used my abilities to prevent wars, to protect my society. My partner and I- my friends-" Kaku's fists were clenched in the sheets to the point of painful. "I had a _cause_. It didn't matter that I bled for it- where did you think I got these scars, a car accident? They're from a battle with one of the best warriors on the planet, I nearly died as a result. Do you understand what I'm saying? This is not a fantasy world I made up! It's violent and ugly and we are constantly on the brink of an all-out war with pirates who will stop at nothing to destroy the order we've fought so hard to protect. I was injured, nearly killed several times, I've had to do things I hate, that I truly despise- I've been in more danger and done things you can't even comprehend and I miss it so much I can't _breathe_! Do you understand that?!"

Kaku swung his feet off the bed, slammed the door open and shut and went to sit down on the couch with his head in his hands, trying to get himself back under control. There was only massive silence from the bedroom behind him.

Well, that could have gone better. Why the hell had he said all that? His own words were burning in his throat like acid, stinging his eyes, cramping in his gut...The material of the couch felt punishingly harsh and _real_ beneath his bare skin. 

His world...his seas...his old room in the Tower of Justice...his faith and beliefs, the battles and the victories... _Lucci_ , all his friends, god, he missed them all so much. He just wanted to go home. 

Kaku stood up and went to get a pair of sweatpants and a shirt out of the dirty clothes basket in the bathroom, skirting the bedroom altogether. His hands made the tea all by themselves, giving his brain a small break. He sat down at the kitchen table, took a sip from his cup and then rapped his knuckles against his forehead for good measure. He had to pull himself together. The reason he'd done his disciplined best to banish all thoughts of home these past long months was that it wouldn't do him any good, and getting emotional about it might trip him up and make him say something stupid, as he'd so aptly demonstrated. Jyabura still taunted him for losing his temper with Zoro in the Tower of Justice. If the stupid wolf ever caught wind of this little scene, Kaku would never live it down... 

He blew on his tea to cool it, the breath ending on a sigh. He felt as tired as if he'd gone another round with Roronoa, though not quite so cut up. 

The liquid had reached the halfway mark in the cup, and Kaku was trying to decide if it was half-empty or half-full, an old saying of Blueno's running through his mind, when the bedroom door opened. Yoshio tiptoed into the kitchen instead of charging in to hand Kaku his marching orders along with an injunction to never show his lying face again, which was what Kaku had partly expected after that inexcusable meltdown. 

Yoshio was wearing the yukata his younger sister had given him last Christmas. He pulled it more tightly around him as he sat down at the kitchen table, only meeting Kaku's gaze fleetingly before staring at the tea cup. He cleared his throat. When he spoke, it sounded both rehearsed and yet still unsure.

"I don't think you're crazy. I never said that." His voice was barely above a whisper. "But, K-Kaku, what am I supposed to do with-...with that?"

Kaku wasn't sure what was being asked, so he said nothing.

"I mean...it would certainly cover the facts...most of the facts. But...this is too big. I can't-...I...I want to believe you. I...I didn't just sleep with you because uh...You have to see that I'm...I'm in love with you." Oh boy, thought Kaku, while his personal little devil of a manipulator sitting on his shoulder said 'oh good'. "I really want to believe you, and I know you're not crazy, that is, you've never shown any hint of, um, delusions before. I trust you, I believe in you, it's just that I need something to help me do that because I'm the one who'll go crazy otherwise, you understand? What you're telling me, that, um, you're a- um, an alien, that's just-"

"I'm human," Kaku muttered. "I don't have the foggiest idea where my world is from here, but considering there's a lot of things in common, I'm guessing this is a parallel dimension. I read about them in some books I got from the library." Which was a neat explanation that covered everything in much the same way as religion; any attempt to apply logic could be banished by countering 'it's something greater than human comprehension and that means anything is possible.'

"Kaku." Yoshio finally looked at him, expression strained. "Do you have any proof of any of this? That's what I'm trying to ask. And I know, I shouldn't force you to prove yourself, I should believe you-"

"Proof? Yes." Kaku finished his tea in one shot. 

For all his 'I don't think you're crazy' talk, it was obvious Yoshi had expected Kaku to say no and to have a convenient and quite delusional explanation for how he'd lost all relevant proof of his extra-terrestrial origin on arrival. His mouth stayed open for a few seconds and when he spoke again, his voice at regular volume banished the wake-like hush in the kitchen, never to be seen again. "You have _proof_?!"

"Yes, if you want to-"

"You've been- all this time you've had proof?! I mean- but- why didn't you-" Yoshi's face scrunched up and he rubbed his forehead. "Never mind. Real proof? I mean, not..."

"No, not made-up proof," Kaku said dryly. "Real proof."

"Why didn't you tell me right away?! Instead of making me think you were- and then just telling me something like that and walking off?!"

Kaku looked at him blankly. "Well...I guess I should have, but I didn't think that'd make you any less upset that I'd lied to you for six months. Maybe you'd rather believe I was a lunatic."

Yoshio made a choked sound and buried his face in his hands, elbows thudding on the table. "Kaku," he said through the gap between his palms, speaking in the tone of one who'd punched through hysteria and found a dubious sort of calm on the other side. "If you can prove that you come from a pa-...I still can't believe I'm saying this but if you can really prove you're from a parallel dimension, then I won't be upset that you lied to me. I mean. No. Really. I think coming from a, uh, parallel dimension is pretty big and supersedes lying to me about your amnesia. Yeah."

"Really?" Kaku was pleasantly surprised that Yoshi seemed to be taking it that way. After all, the fact that he'd lied was incontrovertible, and there wasn't much Kaku could do about that except to apologize formally. Which, in his experience, did sod-all to help. It'd remind him of Lucci's smooth 'You'll forgive me if I apologize, right?' back on Water 7, which had been the polar opposite of conciliatory and meant that way. But if all Yoshi required was proof that Kaku was telling the truth now, he could have that in a moment, as long as Kaku was allowed to take some aspirin afterwards.

He held out his hand. Yoshi stared at it as if he'd never seen one before. 

"What?"

"I'll show you an ability I have. Something nobody on this planet can do. It'll take me a moment. It's not as easy to do here."

Yoshi stared at Kaku's hand for awhile, then gave him a worried glance. Apparently he'd just concluded that Kaku was well and truly barmy and was demonstrating a marvelous and completely imaginary power. In fact, Kaku was wincing around a growing headache and breathlessness, and wishing he'd practiced this instead of letting it lapse.

"Ah, there-" he finally said, interrupted by the crash of a kitchen chair hitting linoleum.

Kaku glanced from the half-formed hooves that had replaced his hands to Yoshio, pressed back against the wall. "I'm sorry. I should have realized this would freak you out a little." The hands returned to normal with what felt like a twang echoing through his temples.

Yoshi was doing a good goldfish impression, eyes bulging at Kaku's perfectly normal hands resting on the table.

"Are you okay?" Kaku finally asked, not wanting the most likely answer. He didn't want Yoshi to fear him, even though he was something that should be feared in final analysis, and not for his ability to morph into a ruminant at will. "Do you want me to leave?"

"...Uh...what was that?" Yoshi asked, sounding totally stunned.

"It's an ability I have. Some people have these skills back home. I can turn into a-...um, an animal." 

"...Animal...?"

"Yes. A giraffe," Kaku added, resigned. "I can turn into a bloody giraffe."

Yoshi didn't double over laughing at the word 'giraffe', but that would be due to circumstances. After a year of adapting to his Zoan power, Kaku was able to do some amazing things with it, and he enjoyed the boost to his fighting abilities, but even he had to admit, in the privacy of his own skull, that of all the herbivores on the face of this and every other earth, the giraffe was one of the goofiest. Inspiring fear was not one of its main characteristics, however tough it was.

Yoshi took a deep breath. "Right," he said softly to himself. Kaku had seen him smooth down his lab coat with the same gesture he now used on his yukata. He went back to the table, sat down and put his fingertips together in an attentive way. The tips were white from pressure, so was the skin around his mouth, but his eyes were clear and sharp. "Can you please do that again?"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. I'm sorry I jumped like that, it was a bit of a shock," said Yoshi as if reading the words off a prompt card, but then his eyes fastened on Kaku's hands and scientific curiosity took over. "How is this even possible? The cell structure-...the _volume_ -...Is it some kind of...illusion?" 

"No. Scientists back home have explained it. I read up on the theory once, after I'd eaten- that is, after I'd gotten this ability, but it was pretty complex jargon and it can't really translate to Japanese, or to your physics as I understand them. Reality waves and dispersion...I don't know enough about it to break it down and translate, sorry." 

"Can you do it again?"

Kaku obliged, ignoring the feeling of strain and the pounding that had started over his eyes. 

Yoshi stared at the left-hand ungulate toes, then reached out and tapped the hoof with his fingernails, then with his knuckles, the set of his shoulders tense and forbidding himself any signs of faltering in the pursuit of scientific investigation.

"That's..." He looked up slowly, then his chair legs scraped against the lino as he flinched. "You- your face! Uh..."

Kaku rubbed his nose, which was larger than a few seconds ago and on the verge of qualifying for the word 'snout'. "I can't keep the transformation to my hands alone. The rest of me wants to keep pace. A giraffe with a human face would look silly, after all."

"Yes, I suppose it would," said Yoshi and slumped slowly from his chair in a dead faint.


	7. Chapter 7

It was pretty damn easy for a Rokushiki user. That cat didn't stand a chance.

Kaku hauled the spitting ball of fury through the open window, upsetting the bowl of cat food that had lured it in, and held it at arm's length by the scruff of its neck. "See? That wasn't so hard. Now what do we do with it?"

"Don't hurt him."

"Him? What about me?" Kaku's wrist and fingers were picking up scratches that would be more than skin deep if he was anybody else. Tough little blighter.

Yoshi looked more concerned about the cat. "Are you sure this is a good idea? He's always preferred to be free."

"You're the one who didn't want to leave him behind. It is a him," Kaku added, twisting the stray cat around for quick examination while avoiding getting his nose raked open in the process. "Now what?"

A couple of weeks had staggered by in a daze since Kaku had told Yoshi the truth, or at least as much of the truth as his friend could handle. At first there'd been nothing but a ringing silence after the revelations; the whole matter seemed just too big to talk about. By common accord the word 'giraffe' was not pronounced, not that it had ever come up much in the conversation before. Kaku thought Yoshi was trying hard to be calm and rational about the whole deal, but the giraffe thing had seriously weirded him out, and he'd managed to sort of block it from his recollection of events for the short term.

When Yoshi broached the subject, it was at first through peripheral concerns. Was Kaku going to say anything to anyone else? was the first question Yoshi asked after a day of silence and false starts. 

Kaku did not intend to; he did not want to end up in a freak show or dissected in a government lab. Yoshio's regrettable tendencies to somewhat distrust authorities came in handy as he admitted that he wasn't quite sure he'd trust his or any other government to be 'reasonable' with Kaku's information.

Where had Karl Crandall come from? 

That was the question Kaku had been worried about. There he had no choice but to lie. Jude had a friend of a friend of a friend, he explained, a matter of favors, modified a passport and ensured it was found, Kaku had worked off the debt at the gym etc. Yoshio's knowledge of the underworld was limited to movies and books, and he accepted Kaku's explanations trustingly without asking where the hell Kaku had come up with the money that would have cost.

Was Kaku able to go back? 

No...The door was closed... 

Yoshi acted unwilling to ask him about his world at first. The whole issue seemed to make his head spin with too great a dose of surrealism to be able to handle without the remove of some time. Time they'd have, it seemed. The subject felt as hard to ignore as a gorilla Zoan sitting in the kitchen, but the forced silence around it was quietly replaced by local papers open on the Rentals page with addresses circled. Whatever the circumstances and wherever Kaku came from, Yoshio was going to stick with him and try to make something out of their relationship, and Kaku felt a little dose of marvel that he hadn't had any hand in manipulating the outcome of this decision. Unless all the efforts he'd done up to now counted, being the perfect roommate and all...but he hadn't actually seduced or influenced Yoshio here and now, so that didn't count. Right? Something inside Kaku wanted to believe that Yoshio had chosen him without his pulling any strings. It wasn't that it made any _difference_ , of course. It was just nice to know. 

It was going to take awhile to find a new place to live. More weeks of getting ugly looks from the landlady. One more promising instance of disgusting their neighbors, in which it became apparent that this world was also familiar with sixty-nines. But delays aside, Yoshi had started collecting packing crates and the conclusion was inevitable. 

It was time to bring the cat in from the cold.

"Here, I'll feed him, then let him hide under the couch for awhile. You scared him." Yoshi rattled the box of food, making the cat's eyes and ears swivel towards it. Then the yellow pupils fixed Kaku once more. The cat still had its legs out, stiff and armed, but it stopped clawing and growling. An agreement was reached. They didn't like each other much, especially after this barefaced treason and border violation on Kaku's part, but they could put up with each other for the sake of the person who'd sheltered and cared for them both all this time. 

 

The cat liked the new apartment. It peed in a corner of the kitchen, scratched at the door once in an unconvincing display of wanting to regain its freedom, and then went to curl up in a self-contained bundle on the plastic-wrapped couch. In the month the two men had 'owned' the animal - a laughable concept at best for any cat, particularly this one - it still wouldn't let Yoshi pet it and it treated Kaku like The Enemy, but it was settling in. Kaku gave it an exasperated look as he put down the boxes he was carrying. Stupid animal was already getting hair over everything.

"Yoshi? That's the last of the boxes. When does your friend Alan want his truck back?"

"Already done?" Yoshi's voice was coming from the bathroom upstairs. "He said by tonight, if possible, otherwise tomorrow."

"Loads of time." Kaku grabbed a few boxes labeled 'bedroom' and climbed the steps up to the mezzanine.

"Yeah, I thought it'd take longer to move us in."

Kaku smirked as he dropped off the boxes. Loading and unloading should have taken longer, but he'd cheated with the number of crates he'd carried. Anyone seeing him hauling four at a time would assume they were empty, so it was safe enough.

A weak afternoon sunshine battled through the grime on the skylight. The place wasn't cheap, but this being Vancouver they'd only been able to afford it because it was in a part of the city that wasn't of best repute, and because the heavy duty maintenance it needed had been part of the bargain. Kaku could do that. He used to build ships with his bare hands, he could take care of an apartment. A good tidying up, a lick of paint, that wall over there with the crappy construction would have to be torn down and rebuilt, and the kitchen needed finishing. And he'd change the banister that ran up the stairs and alongside the mezzanine; some idiot constructor or architect had decided that metal was an audacious choice for an interior, and it looked like something you'd find in the less respectable parts of a dock. 

Kaku idly poked at the railing that topped the half-wall of the mezzanine, then squatted to look at the way it was fixed into the stairs. Straightening, he put both palms on the metal and lifted himself up into a handstand, mind going over finances for the kitchen. He'd need to work extra hours at St Xavier and at the gym. Or preferably, find a new job. Time to look into that. 

Keeping his arms and upper body steady, Kaku lowered his legs into an upside down split, then turned at the hips in a slow motion butterfly kick. The one-and-a-half story apartment was at the top of one of the few residential building in an area full of shops and offices, and most of their windows were too high up and faced to river; there were no neighbors who could look in and see Kaku doing upside down pressups on the narrow span of a metal banister. It was liberating.

"We forgot to get a shower curtain- _What the-_ " 

Kaku glanced at an upside down Yoshi, framed by the doorway to the bathroom, mouth open and an empty box dangling forgotten in his hands.

"Kaku- are you crazy?! Get down! You'll kill yourself!"

"Yoshi," Kaku said, drawing out the vowels in gentle reproof. "I told you about this."

"About- uh? Look, I know you can do a handstand, and that you're some kind of martial arts guru, but that's- that's a bit- ah!"

Kaku, feeling impish, had shifted his balance so that he was standing rock steady on one hand, the other scratching his long nose. "Yes?"

"It's _ten feet down!_ " 

Yoshi cried out, horrified from behind a hand muffling his mouth, as Kaku shoved up with his arms. The agent twisted in mid-air, faster than any cat, and perched on the banister, balls of his sneakers against the metal, hands casually hanging over his bent knees. "See? I'm fine."

"Ngn." Yoshi dropped the empty box and slid down the side of the door, hand still over his mouth. "Don't do that..."

"Yoshi...." Kaku hesitated, but what the hell. "Even if I did fall, which I won't, I can't hurt myself."

"What if you fell wrong? What if you landed on your bloody head?" Yoshi snapped.

"I'd still be fine. You know that truck? The one that put me in the hospital where we first met?"

"The truck?" Yoshi was barely listening, scowling anxiously at Kaku's foothold. "What about it?"

"It did hit me. I lied when I said it missed. It caught me in the hip and sent me flying, and I was still fine. I was injured on my arrival here, but that truck didn't even bruise me."

After a stunned minute, Yoshi said, "But...how is that even possible?"

"It's something I can do. It's related to martial arts."

"Can everybody back-...back where you come from do that?"

"No, only a dozen people or so. That I know of," Kaku amended, skirting a little too close to the truth about CP9 and their abilities. "People are better at hand to hand fighting where I come from. We don't have the same technology level, but we have Dev- we have those special abilities I showed you."

"Yeah. I remember. Giraffe." Yoshi gave him a bewildered look. "My life is just so weird these days."

"Do you regret it?"

"What?" Yoshi cocked his head, puzzled, then started back into the wall as Kaku suddenly materialized right in front of him, hands against the plaster on either side of Yoshi's head.

"Do you regret walking into that hospital room seven months ago?" 

"How did you-...I can't get over how fast you are."

"Answer me."

"What? Regret meeting you? No, of course not," Yoshi said, words tumbling out in honest surprise too fast for self-consciousness to catch them, "I love you, how can I regret-"

You don't even know me, was what Kaku wanted to say from somewhere deep inside where lay a curl of honesty. I've been undercover for seven months now, I'm normally not as conciliating as all that. Or am I...? After all, the only time he could have said to 'be himself' was in Enies Lobby, and there he was a CP9 agent as much as he was a person. He trained, fought, kept the peace between Jyabura and Lucci when he could be bothered, drank late at night with his lover to make the time pass and the blood spilled seem more amusing than grim, and he-

"Kaku...?"

"Hmm? Sorry, I was- thank you. For-"

"Who was this guy...the one you called your partner?"

It gave Kaku a nasty turn, to think Yoshi could have followed his train of thought that well. Then he realized, from the way his friend was frowning and not meeting his gaze, that this was probably a question that had been on Yoshi's mind for some time and that he'd been chewing over in his typical introverted way.

"Partner?" asked Kaku, probing.

"Yeah. You mentioned him when you, uh, yelled the other day." That should have been vague, but Kaku had only ever raised his voice once in his entire stay on this planet, so he knew exactly what Yoshi was referring to; his torrential, all-too-revealing monologue after they'd had sex the first time. "And you sort of mentioned him last week. Tangentially. I'm, um, you were close. Right?"

"Yes. He was actually my work partner, but yes, we were close." Kaku sat down in front of Yoshi, hand slipping from the wall to his friend's thigh.

"I should have realized that when you said you didn't have amnesia, you would remember someone, a previous relationship. It's just hard to get used to the fact that you do remember your entire life, that you had a life before." Yoshi was mumbling, circling the question he really wanted to ask. "What's his name?"

"Lucci," Kaku answered. After all, Yoshi knew Kaku's name, so-

"Lucci?" It sounded utterly alien on Yoshi's lips. "Is that Italian?"

"Most definitely not," said Kaku dryly.

"What was he like?"

"Ah...Tough. Extremely smart. Not always easy to get along with. Dedicated." Able to kill hundreds of men without feeling the slightest ounce of remorse, added Kaku's darker side with an ache of longing. Merciless for the sake of something greater and better than all of us. He forged himself into a weapon for Justice, burned out all his weaknesses and a lot of his humanity, but what was left he shared with me, in the dead of night when the blood smelled too strongly and- 

"...Did you love him?" asked Yoshi, bringing Kaku's thoughts down to levels as trite as those annoying ballads on the car radio.

"Yes," he answered, since it was the simplest answer he could give, and about as close to the truth as a stone skipping along the water could be said to be close to the entire river. But Yoshi would not be able to understand the truth, much less handle it. The truth that was Lucci was...too big, too extreme, it didn't fit in peaceful Vancouver which had never been pillaged by pirates or slavers. It would also spill too much light on Kaku himself, the side that Yoshi wouldn't be able to handle anymore than the rest. Any further attempt to explain his partner died in Kaku's mind stillborn, going no further than 'Lucci was...I was...' with the occasional detour through 'there's some really, really bad pirates where I come from-'...

Lucci was. The past tense was bolted into that sentence whichever way Kaku tried to turn it. Lucci could be dead; the average life expectancy of a CP9 agent was somewhere in the mid thirties. Kaku used to believe that Lucci was unkillable in the same way he believed the sun rose in the east, but a punk kid in a straw hat had damn near proved them otherwise, and certainly proved that Lucci was not unbeatable. Yes, Lucci could be dead. In a way, he was, now that he was so far away. Kaku was by nature practical and dealt in the here and now. If - _when_ he got back to his world, he certainly hoped to see the man, but he was ready to have nothing more than an unmarked grave by which to drink sake one last time before carrying on the game of survival a little while longer. It wasn't a sign of his non-attachment to Lucci, it was...it was them. Had been them. 

Yoshi had seen people die before in the hospital, but those deaths had been asepticized tragedies rather than murder or kill-or-be-killed logic. This was just one more truth that was too big for an inhabitant of this peaceful land. And that was alright, these things shouldn't come into contact. This train of thought was getting way too dark and involved, Kaku decided. He pushed it away, and distracted Yoshi by dragging him off to the bedroom and baptizing the house the way lovers in both worlds did.

Kaku held him in his arms, conscious of how much damage he could do if he wanted to, watching his hands glide harmlessly down Yoshi's hips while his lover panted and ground back into him. In a warm heap later, Kaku caressed the dark hair from Yoshi's ear and whispered "I love you," since this was the sort of time a lover would expect that. It was a lie, but it wasn’t the biggest lie he'd ever told. 

'Lucci was...I was...' No, better not go there.


	8. Chapter 8

'Fight the good fight!' the pamphlet boldly ordered him. Kaku read the blurb for the nth time, then dropped it back on the gym's work bench. Fight, it said, yet the picture showed uniformed men and women helping refugees, dealing with natural disasters and doing this 'peacekeeping' thing that Kaku had barely gotten his head around, geopolitically speaking. What these soldiers were doing was good work. It was undoubtedly exciting and validating. It was truly admirable. It just wasn't him.

Kaku twisted around and shot across the dojo, Soru taking him to the center of the space, air ripping around him. It was shortly after two in the morning, nobody was around. The keys to the place was one of the advantages that kept him working at the gym. There were times he just needed somewhere to cut loose.

It had occurred to him months ago already that there might be a better outlet for the coiled lethal energies inside him than a cheap gym in a low-rent area of Vancouver...The Canadian Armed Forces did not have the kind of job Kaku would need to feel like he was fulfilling his purpose in life, but they weren't the only ones hiring. Hell, for all he knew, the Canadians might very well have carefully concealed black ops teams, and if not, their neighbors down south almost certainly did. 

Fight the good fight...Kaku sent a low-powered Rankyaku whistling towards the reinforced concrete wall. He removed all the mattressed padding before he practiced. If the gym's owner ever peeked behind them one day, he'd undoubtedly be curious as to where all those chiseled gashes had come from.

Kaku interrupted himself in the middle of assassinating the air around him with a series of Shigan, and sank down on the bench with a tired sigh. He should get to bed. It would be a pity to be tired for dinner tonight. Yoshi was putting together something special to celebrate their first meeting a year ago. That this was also the anniversary of Kaku's arrival on this planet and an event he might not want to celebrate hadn't crossed Yoshi's mind, and Kaku kept his silence about it. Hopefully Yoshi hadn't noticed his lover slipping out of their bed for the past five nights to go and sweat out a sense of restlessness and unease at two in the morning...

Kaku's view of the future had always been somewhat limited, starting with the Now and going no further than the end of his current mission; long-term planning was left to his masters. He'd gone for five years in Water 7 without ever feeling this itchiness beneath the skin, this need to _do_ something...He'd always been adept at immersing himself in his role, as well as enjoying the simple pleasures of his life undercover, whether it was building ships or making friends. But in the background, there'd always been the mission. Kaku told himself his mission was survival in this alien world, but he'd been a little too successful at that. He was _in_ now, he had a place here, a job, a companion, friends, an apartment and a paper trail like any other citizen. He should enjoy this - a part of him did enjoy this - but Kaku wasn't...he wasn't Karl Crandall, whatever it said on his tax return. Kaku had known who he was since the age of ten: a soldier, a weapon of Justice. A soldier obeyed orders without question...and he'd just run out of them. 

The pamphlet was once more in his hand. He didn't remember picking it up. He couldn't figure out if finding new orders to follow, in the name of a cause he would not feel particularly bound to, was really the right thing to do or not. Did he really want to shed blood for this government? Canada was a nice place, but he didn't particularly feel the urge to kill for it. In the unlikely case they asked him to do so, it would no longer be for the same reasons as before. Changing causes...that would be like changing religions. When both positions claimed to be the absolute truth, switching would make both choices equally invalid. The very thought felt worryingly disloyal, Kaku tried not to dwell on it. 

Besides, any move towards covert ops would mean Kaku would have to reveal himself, because his fake ID wouldn't hold up to truly close inspection and there was no way any government would buy a pig in a poke for that kind of job. Popping up out of nowhere saying "Hi, I'm an insanely strong alien, hire me!" would be one almighty risk. 

Yes, it would, but taking a gamble like that would be part of the _fun_ , argued his internal adrenaline junkie who was tired of cleaning gym lockers.

Kaku dropped the pamphlet like it was guilty evidence. Clear as the practice dummy shoved back against the wall, he could see Spandam on the last meeting they'd had shortly before Kaku's dimensional accident. The director had been leaning over his desk in his usual puffed-up, aggressive way, waving The Finger of Command around. "Those peabrained Marines! But we owe them for letting us use the Buster Call, and I want to get rid of that debt. So listen up, both of you! You're going to assist them and take down those rebels, but - this is important - you are to let the Navy grunts storm the place first. It is out of the question for two of my agents to risk their lives in open battle. You two - all of you CP9 - are my resources. Sure, I know there was that failure last year at Enies Lobby," Spandam had added in the manner of one bravely overcoming a serious disappointment in cherished if not-too-bright underlings. Both Kaku and Blueno had kept their expressions set on dead neutral. "But that doesn't mean we're going to waste the years of training invested in you on some dumb attack. You are too precious for this government to lose! Your lives are not your own, you are not to take any unnecessary risks. Except when you're following my orders, of course."

"Yes sir."

Your lives are not your own. You are not to take any risk. Yes sir.

Of course, a cold rational analysis of his situation would argue that that life and those orders were behind him, at least for now and the foreseeable future. Sure. Right. Of course. Kaku never even thought about a possible rescue anymore, in case it sapped his morale. And yet...four months ago, when he'd obtained his driver's license, he'd dropped Yoshi off at work and then, on a whim, driven out on the Trans Canada. He'd parked the car (totally illegally) on the side of the highway, finding his way to the right spot unerringly as if a part of him had been back there every day. The weather-worn markers had been untouched, no signs of-...no signs of anything and he hadn't been expecting anything anyway. Right. Right, but he'd still dug up the old poster from under its rock and penciled in his new address and directions. He told himself he wasn't losing anything by doing this, but he knew the gesture meant more to him than that.

Just thinking about that unheard cry for help made him hunch over a fraction, a small ache spearing through the layers of insulation around his feelings, an echo of the moment when he'd picked up a plastic globe attached to a pencil sharpener a year ago and realized he was lost. Kaku swallowed, rubbed his face. Then, with the discipline that was second nature to him, he put the gym back together again and in the same way gathered up the mask, the pleasant smile, the mannerisms, expressions, even thoughts and emotions of his alter-ego, all slipping over the dulling pain like well-worn and comfortable clothes. 

The air outside was crisp and wet with the smell of the last leaves clinging to the gutter, the scent of the sea above it all, and there was the faintest hint of dawn on the horizon. Kaku breathed deeply. Seize the moment...He headed towards his bike, feeling much better for having exercised. Nothing like a bit of a workout to get the energy flowing again. Did this burgeoning feeling of cheer and optimism belong to the man he wore like a mask, or to the man beneath it...? Both? He wasn't sure, and he supposed it didn't really matter. Today...today he was going to work on the wooden balustrade he was building for the apartment. He'd grab a nap before going to work this afternoon, and be home in time for that celebratory dinner. 

The pamphlet was in his bag, along with a book on physics he was working his way through; if there was a way back from this side, he had to start somewhere. But he had the time, he'd only been here a year, there was no hurry to choose any particular path yet. It wasn't as if he was going anywhere.

 

 

January flew by, as Kaku decided to do something a bit more constructive at the gym than clean up (he'd checked out a physics course, but he'd have a lot more work to put in before he could make much of that).

 

"There we go." Kaku tightened the screw and checked the plane with a quick glance, so much more acute and less fiddly than a level. "You can let go now."

Yoshi took a step back, then walked down the stairs to get a better overall view of their new balustrade.

"It looks great! I still can't believe you carved that with your own hands."

"It gave me something to do," Kaku answered nonchalantly, though in fact he was rather pleased with the results. He'd tried and quickly abandoned the jigsaws, sanders and other machines this world had to offer. In his opinion, you just couldn't obtain quite the same finish with those mechanical devices that you could with your hands and a good ol' chisel. He'd used the money saved on renting the machines and spent it on good quality wood, incidentally becoming the bane of many a hardware store salesman in the process. The people here might be superb metalsmiths, but they didn't know their hardy ship-oak from their cork. 

He went to stand next to Yoshi and they admired his handiwork for a minute. An arm slipped around Kaku's waist and Yoshi grinned at him. "You're wonderful company, you have buns of steel and you fix things. You're the perfect boyfriend all right." And then a more serious light kindled in his eyes despite the teasing expression. "You're perfect."

I'm a lie, thought Kaku, now forcing his own smile with the ease of years of practice. For some reason, he'd suddenly thought of Paulie slapping him on the back and saying "Kaku, you’re the best buddy a guy could have." Screaming "I thought you were my friends!"...Those words were a compliment to an infiltrator's skill. It'd meant Kaku had done his job well and won the target's trust. In the upside down world of CP9 where duty meant disobeying civil law, Justice was served with trial-free executions and one's only honor was in having none, it all made sense, it all hung together. But here...

Kaku wasn't exactly pretending with Yoshi anymore, since his lover now knew his origins. True, he'd withheld a lot of information about his past, but Kaku's world was so remote that the lack of knowledge wouldn't affect Yoshi either way. But, perfect? Kaku was a good listener, sure...because he'd been trained to be. He was a great conversationalist, yes; a vast if superficial education about everything from art to zoology had guaranteed it. He and Yoshi never argued. Kaku let his lover have his way most of the time - when one had stared death in the eyes on multiple occasions, matters such as the color of the new couch really had no impact whatsoever - and he automatically steered them away from any serious argument they might have about matters he cared about by gently maneuvering Yoshi into his way of thinking before a fight was even on the far horizon. Superficially speaking, Kaku was indeed the perfect companion. But all these qualities that made him such a good catch were part of masks he'd built and used all his adult life. Had they become part of his persona now, or was he still using them out of habit? Would he be any different if he had the possibility of living without any lies at all? The chameleon, asked its original colors, came up blank...

Yoshi returned with the good wine he'd bought the other day. Kaku accepted the glass and the kiss, and resisted the pervading urge to...to start a fight. To argue politics, for instance. Yes, that was certainly something they'd argue over for hours if he actually said what he thought. He raised his glass in a toast and looked at his companion through the red liquid. If I did that, would you still love me, Yoshi? Would you even know me?

The answer being no, his hard, practical side dropped the whole question into a black hole marked 'irrelevant'. The truth was an intangible concept anyway, and it was just as real to say that Kaku liked living with Yoshi. It was pleasant to have someone to grin knowingly when Kaku mentioned giraffes, or hold him at night when Kaku didn't want to think too hard or remember...There was too much to lose and nothing to gain by treading on forbidden ground, so the truth would have to be only skin deep. Yoshi was happy, Kaku was as contented as he was likely to be in the circumstances, so what did it matter anyway.

 

 

In March, Kaku got an intriguing offer of some part-time work from one of the gym's customers he'd accidentally flattened while sparring. The job was pretty easy for him, and often quite amusing.

 

The instructor who'd selected Kaku and two others for the last leg of their training was a retired CP9 agent, wounded in combat half a dozen years ago. He had all the humor of a streak of vinegar, his crippled body curled into a perpetual hunch, expression cynical and worn. He was barely forty. 

"All the other Cipher Pol agencies have their articles of conduct written down in legalese. CP9 doesn't have them written down at all, so listen up, greenies. I'll list them out and you'll remember them. 

"Rule One: you obey orders.

"Rule Two: you lay down your lives to follow Rule One if that's what it takes. The mission is paramount. Our Justice is paramount. Your sorry asses don't mean jack-shit next to that.

"Rule Three: you don't exist. Our secrecy is absolute. There's no glory in these ranks, boys. Just a quick death, if you're lucky. 

"Rule Four: you try not to kill any civilians unless rules One, Two or Three say you should. Then it's no mercy. 

"Rule Five: you follow all the above rules to the letter if you value your salaries and your hides. 

"Got it? Rules Six through Eleven are boring and deal with expense reports, chain of command, pay scales and such. Go bug the director's aide for them if you absolutely wanna, let's move on to the more interesting stuff now. You've mastered Soru, Geppou, Tekkai and Kami or you wouldn't even be here, but we've withheld the final two, Shigan and Rankyaku. So today, I'm gonna start teaching you how to kill a guy with your bare hands so quickly he won't even know he's dead until they bury him. My other colleague over there will teach you how to set up your cover story so you can get away with it and not bring this agency a whole lot of grief that would force them to terminate you, and I ain't talking severance pay here-"

"Kaku?" Yoshio prompted.

"Hmm?" Kaku looked up from where he was toying with his chicken parmigiana and a morass of memories. 

"You were going to tell me about your job back there. Was it like being a cop here?"

"Yes, pretty much. How's the fish? This restaurant is nice, isn't it."

 

 

In April, strong with his past experience, Kaku found more interesting employment in an upper scale gym. Cleaning lockers was no longer part of his job description unless he really, really wanted to. 

 

The transport plane hummed through the upper atmosphere, the special ceramic alloy coating its sides ensuring absolute radar silence. Which did not mean that the insides didn't rattle like canned thunder. Kaku was so used to the noise, the weight of his gear and the rub of the high Kevlar collar against his chin that he'd have felt jumpy without them. 

"So?" asked his colleague, lounging in one of the unbuckled jump seats contrary to security regulations.

Kaku held out the mission statement their captain had just handed him. The grainy picture and the name of the country where their target was hiding made the other soldier grin with anticipation. 

"Classic search-and-recover," Kaku said, tapping the readout. "In and out with no-one the wiser, same as usual."

"It should be search-and-destroy," was the answering grumble. "It's easier and less prone to go FUBAR."

"That's not how the Special Ops do it, bud. At least, not the Canadians," Kaku amended. 

"It should be. Here, look at this!" Jyabura ripped off his helmet and gestured at the maple leaf. "Don't that look like a bloody paw-print to you? Just a little?"

"Not even remotely."

"Come on, you know it does. Our motto shouldn't be 'United against fear', that's totally lame. It should be 'Covert, Fast and Deadly'. No, 'Deadly and Covert', rings better-"

"And Silent," was the very final-sounding suggestion from their captain, standing behind the pilot's seat. The pigeon on his shoulder reinforced the quasi-order with a haughty look.

Kaku's breath rattled in his throat in a strangled gasp as he sat straight up, sheets thrown back. Yoshi, who'd tiptoed in and had been removing his jacket as quietly as he could manage, stood frozen in shock with one hand stuck halfway up a sleeve.

"Shit, Kaku, you scared me. Did I wake you up? I'm sorry."

"I'm not." Kaku stared around the bedroom, dazed. "I was having a particularly disturbing dream."

"I told you to not eat all that pizza last night."

"Right you are. Never touching pizza again as long as I live." Kaku scrubbed his face, ran fingers through hair that was getting long and acquiring a faint hint of curl again. The clock on the bed stand ticked and tocked smugly to inform him that it was five in the morning and that he had to get up soon.

"What was your dream about?"

"I don't remember," said Kaku without a second thought. Deadly and Covert. 

 

 

In June, Yoshi was promoted. He no longer had night shifts. Instead, along with his regular duties, he had a complicated research project on MRI and skull injury treatment that required him to be on call, occasionally at night. He complained that it was even more tiring than working shifts, but it was obvious he was pleased with the work. 

 

 

Kaku knew what the three men wanted as soon as he spotted them, and the look he gave them - which included the two trying to hide behind the dumpster - was meant to warn them off. He might have done a bit more in that regard, perhaps. But then again, if these men were from a certain criminal going by the name of Chang Wei Ling who'd suddenly decided to tidy up his accounts, or frogmarch Kaku into another hit, Kaku would rather deal with them here than back at the apartment. 

And maybe there was another reason, a dark current that stirred him and whispered that it'd been a long time since he'd felt something break beneath his fingers...Kaku turned his back to lock the gym's service entrance, leaving himself wide open, an invitation to an attack. 

"Don't close that, man." The voice full of menace tried to disguise the fact that the speaker wasn't yet at an age where shaving was a daily requirement. Kaku rolled his eyes to the dumb heavens which couldn't even send him a decent threat. These yahoos were after the gym's cash register and his wallet, no more.

He turned towards the kid, and let himself obligingly get jumped by the other two behind the dumpster. They were older, bigger, tougher, they had knives. Kaku let _them_ have it without a second thought. 

The kid goggled at Kaku and his two fallen buddies, a flick-knife looking ridiculously small in his hand; he was rather big and bulky for his age. Then he did the smart thing. He turned and ran like the devil himself was after him. It wasn't the devil though; a kicked garbage can lid - the strength behind it toned down to avoid cutting the kid in half - caught him across the back of the legs and sent him hurtling into a chain-link fence at the end of the alley. He wasn't going anywhere for a few minutes, so the next logical step was to take care of the ones who were still mobile before they could get away.

Kaku realized his thoughts were heading down the 'no witnesses' tracks and applied the brakes. 

The guy who'd collapsed at his feet made a retching noise, curled up around a badly bruised solar plexus. Kaku absently moved aside to avoid getting anything noisome on his shoes. The third attacker had been hurled back with a kick into the dumpster. There'd been a nasty sound as the mugger's head hit the lid, but it looked like he was still alive.

Now what...?

Kaku scowled and shoved up his cap, gaze going from one to the other, with a quick glance around for any bystanders that could conceivably have wandered around a back alley at midnight. _Now_ what? They'd tried to mug him, he'd kicked their asses in retaliation, fair enough...but what about the little old lady these thugs bushwhacked tomorrow? Justice - the Justice Kaku believed in - said that her blood would be on his head if he did not take steps to remove this threat permanently. The good of the whole was more important than a few lives, innocent or otherwise. But the Canadian legal system had somewhat different views on the matter. There were practical considerations as well, especially if the cops could trace the bodies back to the gym-

The cops. He could just call the cops. That's what an honest, upstanding citizen named Karl Crandall would do. 

An almighty internal argument started on cue. 

The solar-plexus guy made a sound like a drain being emptied, shuddered and craned his neck to look up at Kaku's expression. Whatever it was that the mugger saw there scared the shit out of him. He picked himself up, edged around Kaku as far as he could and stumbled towards the mouth of the alley, grabbing his friend by the dumpster in passing. They backed away from him, heads low, free hands out with fingers wide and harmless, whole body language that of wolves who'd just had a mighty realignment in their pack politics and knew who Alpha was now. The kid at the chainlink fence must have had a particularly thick skull, and was already recovered and gone. 

Caught between two equally unappealing choices on how to proceed, Kaku watched the thugs skedaddle, letting them go out of sheer indecision which was, to his way of thinking, as bad as actually making a wrong call. But he didn't want to get involved with the police again, and as for the other approach, he had no orders, no cause, the situation hardly called for extremes, he wasn't likely to see _that_ lot here any time soon from the looks on their faces, and as for the little old lady, she would just have to watch her back. Kaku jerked down his cap and stomped off towards his bike, feeling unsatisfied with his evening all in all.

 

In August, Yoshi suggested they plan a trip to Japan that winter. Kaku had to remind his lover that he wasn't so sure what the international airlines and customs would make of him and his fake papers. 

 

"Look, there's one!" Yoshi shouted. "Kaku, come here and look, you're missing it. I think it's a humpback."

"Great," said Kaku, not moving from his seat. He was wearing a life-jacket, a clip-on harness to the boat's railing and his fingers were digging into the bench every time the prow hit a wave at high speeds. He didn’t think he could move if he tried. Even a hammer like him was comfortable on sailing ships. He _understood_ sailing ships. In a way he understood the theory behind speed boats too, but the way they plowed through the sea like they were trying to dig a hole in it put him on edge.

Huang grinned and slowed down, turning the boat in a large arc so that Kaku could also see the spouts fifty yards away.

"Wow, they're huge," said Kaku a little indulgently. They'd be a tunafish snack for Sea Kings, but these whales were nonetheless quite big in their own rights. It was all a matter of which frame of reference you used.

"That was great," Yoshi said, loud enough to be heard over the wind as they sped back to the harbor where sake, sushi and good company waited for them. Huang, Diana and their daughters were up near the front of the boat, and Yoshi had joined Kaku on the bench, sitting close. "I can't believe I've lived here all my life and never bothered to see them before. How about you. Happy?"

"Yes," Kaku answered automatically, and then he realized he was. He wondered if it was a lie, part of the mask...but decided it was like the whales, all a matter of your frame of reference. 

 

But then in September...


	9. Chapter 9

A last turn of the pedals sent Kaku accelerating over the parking lot's speed bump and coasting into the bicycle shed right past the sign asking him to walk his wheels in sedately. The gathering rain clouds grew sulky as they watched him lock up his bike, sheltered from the soaking they'd been contemplating. Satisfied that he'd beaten the Vancouver weather for once, Kaku climbed the stairs three at a time rather than bother with the elevator. Some students had kept him late, and he was getting hungry.

"I'm back," he called out, walking in and dropping his backpack. He glanced quickly through the pile of mail on top of the shoe cupboard as he toed off his sneakers. "Yoshi?"

No answer. Yoshi was home; his laptop bag was in the middle of the way as per usual. Probably on the computer with the headphones on. Kaku flipped through the letters addressed to him: ads for credit cards cleverly disguised as real correspondence, a statement of account from Elis, a postcard from Australia sent by that guy he'd met this summer at the studio-

Kaku slowly looked up from the mail. Something...something had stirred instincts that hadn't seen much use this past year-and-some. Maybe it was just the absence of keyboard noises or the creak of a chair. And maybe it was nothing, he'd been wrong before. But he stayed alert, out of habit and because there was always the possibility that a criminal middleman called Chang might attempt to get back in touch with him one day. Kaku headed straight to the living room on silent feet. 

Turning the doorknob quietly, he pushed the door open while staying out of firing range. Nobody in his line of sight, but he heard a quick indraw of breath from Yoshi. Kaku stepped in with one smooth movement, ready for anything.

Yoshi was sitting on the couch facing the door. He was staring at it, eyes wide enough to paint a circle of white around the pupils. Lucci was leaning one hip on the back of the couch with his hand on Yoshio's shoulder in a warning grip.

In the stunned moment that washed around Kaku like seawater, paralyzing him, the patter of letters falling to the hardwood floor sounded abnormally loud. 

On the second try, he managed to say, "Lucci?"

Lucci stood up and walked around the couch, eyes not leaving Kaku. He was dressed in the black suit and white tie. No hat, but Hattori was perched on his shoulder, looking at Kaku with beady eyes, expression as inscrutable as his master's. It was a vision Kaku had had a hundred times, fantasies and dreams and wish fulfillment and a few nightmares...

"I thought I'd never see you again," were the first words that came out of Kaku's mouth, soft with simple wonder. 

Lucci made a 'tsk' that sounded too annoyed to be anything other than put on. He shook his head, dark locks sliding over his shoulder. "You very nearly did not. But you have the devil's own luck, as usual."

Kaku reached out as Lucci closed the distance between them, touching Lucci's forearm, dark cloth with power coiled beneath it. The fleeting touch to his wrist in return was as real as the room around them. Lucci's lips curved as if he found Kaku's obvious mental flails entertaining, while dark eyes sized him up, eyes that were always measuring, ever-ready, treating every inch of the world around them like a battlefield. Kaku had been like that once. He remembered. He'd thought he still was, though now that he saw the template, he wondered just how badly he'd lost himself and what it was that those dark eyes saw when they looked at him.

"Is Blueno here with you?" Lucci asked, loud enough to be heard over Hattori who had suddenly set up a carol of happy coos as he bobbed about on his master's shoulder.

"Blueno? No. He didn't come through the door. I think he was killed."

A frown twisted the line between Lucci's predator eyebrows as he reached up to Hattori, a finger soothing wing feathers. "We thought that might be the case. The door he left was...unusual."

"The door? The door was _gone_! I searched- I went back and looked so hard-" 

A gesture interrupted him. "Later. We'll go into the details once we get you back to the other side. There's no immediate hurry though. I only just got here."

"Right. Right." Kaku's brain was producing words that didn't seem to go anywhere near his thought processes. Back? Back to the other side..."Was it hard getting here? Are you okay, can I get you anything?"

Lucci looked cynically amused at the banalities, as he usually did - twenty one months and counting since Kaku had last seen Lucci but it was all coming back with the impact of a speeding truck, every intonation, every gesture. 

"Do you have any water that doesn't taste like dog's piss?"

"Oh, of course. Stay here, I'll get it for you." 

Letters scattered beneath his feet as Kaku headed towards the far side of the living room and the door to the kitchen. He walked past the sink, past the table where some take-out was getting cold, opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of spring water, closed the door and sagged against its cool, white surface, forehead pressed against his forearm. 

Lucci. Good god. The bottle was cold and wet as it touched his cheek. He wasn't dreaming. But he couldn't get a handle on this situation. Like a shipwrecked sailor who'd been talking to the birds for the last two years until he forgot how to address another human being...

And then an old voice he'd heard less and less these days reminded him that Lucci did not simply fall under the heading of 'another human being'. This was Lucci, sharp as a knife and with no patience for weakness. Kaku could feel overwhelmed on his own time, right now he had to focus on the fact that Lucci had shown up out of nowhere and- oh god, Yoshi. 

His lover's pale face and wide eyes flashed through his mind. Kaku buried his face in one hand, elbow still propped against the fridge's door, biting his lips over a groan. How long had Lucci been here? Yoshi hadn't been harmed physically, but if Lucci had wanted information, he would not have needed to lift a finger, and he could still pack one hell of a punch with just a few words and his presence alone; the man was an expert, after all. And with the sadistic whims of a cat at times, but that only really engaged when people measured up to him in Lucci's eyes, and however much he liked Yoshi, Kaku knew his lover didn't qualify on that scale. Once Lucci had gotten the requested information, he would have ignored Yoshio the same way he'd have ignored the cat who would be hiding in the smallest, darkest corner it could find right now. No, Lucci would not have laid a finger on Yoshi, leaving the younger man frightened and confused for the number of hours it'd taken Kaku to get home.

Younger man...? As a matter of fact, Yoshi and Lucci were the same age, thirty now. Kaku had never made the connection before; those two men in the living room were so radically different- but this was not the time for idle contemplation. Kaku's brain had revved up and was now running on all cylinders and then some, instincts and strategies and ingrained behaviors clicking into place. 

Yoshi looked up from where he was still sitting frozen on the couch. Lucci was standing at the window observing the curve of the road below where streetlights were poking through the gathering darkness. Kaku spared Yoshi a quick, reassuring smile that did absolutely nothing to soothe his lover by the looks of it, before turning his concentration on Lucci as the latter turned around. 

"Here you go. So, how did you find me?"

"You left us a message," Lucci said archly, studying the plastic bottle Kaku had tossed him. 

Kaku walked over, took the bottle from him, opened the screwcap with a twist and handed it back. "Yes, I know I left you a message, thank you for reminding me. I meant, how did you figure how to get here?"

"With some difficulty. You could have left us better directions than which quarter of the city you lived in."

"I thought I was crazy to leave you anything at all. I thought I'd lost-" No, he couldn't go there. The emotions were too rough, too uncontrollable right now, and he needed control like a drowning man needed a lifesaver. "How did you find your way through the city?"

"Took me awhile," Lucci answered after taking a short swig from the bottle. "I had to ask for directions a few times to get to the right area, then I walked around, matching street signs to the numbers in your scribble."

"You _asked_? You don't speak the language."

"No." For the barest instant, Lucci's eyes flickered in Yoshi's direction. "I grabbed someone off the street who looked impressionable, showed them the address you'd left us, indicated I didn't speak their gibberish and waited. Eventually they pointed me in the right direction." 

"I bet they did."

"I repeated the process until I'd triangulated this area. Then I just used my eyes."

"I see. Is it just you? I mean, are you alone?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Uh, are the others-"

"Later," Lucci repeated in his 'not in front of the civilians' voice. 

"Okay...Are you hungry?"

Lucci shrugged, Hattori riding the movement without ruffling a single feather. 

"Yoshi?" Kaku turned deliberately to his lover. "Do you think you could get us something to eat? Not the take-out, use the stuff I bought at the deli, the organic produce. Please?"

Yoshi had been staring at them. Being addressed made him start. He said nothing, but got to his feet and headed towards the kitchen like a robot. At least he was out of the room now. 

Kaku turned back to find Lucci watching him. 

"I see you met my friend," said Kaku.

"He speaks our language. Badly."

"Sort of. It's complicated." 

"Yes. 'Japanese'. He explained somewhat. Rather meek, isn't he."

Kaku didn't answer that. "I speak the other language now, English. One of the other languages. There are hundreds. Also some very interesting technology. And weapons." That had the anticipated effect. Yoshio was relegated to the bottom of Lucci's list of interests. "I'm glad you didn't cause a ruckus to get here. Their guns can punch through sheet metal and put a dent in tempered steel."

"Tekkai?"

"Should keep you alive, but severely bruised, maybe even injured. You can stop giving me that inquisitive stare, you know. I managed not to get shot once in my two years here, so I can't say I've tested it out. They have bigger weapons, too. Here, this will interest you. It's the principal method of information gathering I used when I first arrived here." Kaku picked up the remote and switch on the TV. Lucci's eyes were immediately drawn to the shiny light, the noise and the movement. 

"Go on, sit down a bit. Sounds like you've been walking for most of the day. Here, this is the way to control it. Hit these buttons to change channels-" Kaku surfed faster than ever before until he hit the news, and the sight of a tank rolling through the rubble of a house in some Middle Eastern town finished the job of riveting his colleague's attention. Lucci sank down on the edge of the chair behind him, narrow-eyed gaze on the sight, fingers wrapping absently around the remote Kaku had pressed into his hand. 

"Feel free to change the show. All of it is interesting to get a feel for the culture and the technology. The only thing is, the tool to change the channels doesn't work too well if you point it the wrong way, or get too far from the TV. You have to stay at this distance for it to work. Okay? I'll come back and explain some of this in a bit, I just need to pop into the kitchen for a minute, see if Yoshi knows which food to use. You don't want the regular stuff they eat here, it's poison, took me months to get used to it." Kaku was already edging out of the room. Lucci appeared not to notice. 

Yoshi was standing at the kitchen counter, staring at a head of lettuce as if he'd never seen one before. 

"Hey," Kaku said softly, "you okay?"

After a second, his lover lifted his head and gave Kaku pretty much the same look as the lettuce. "Huh?"

"Are you okay?" Of course he wasn't okay. "I'm sorry if he was a bit, um, brusque with you. Lucci is in unknown territory, and that makes him a little...intense right now." He can be quite charming when he's worming his way into someone's inner circle with the intention of killing them, were the words Kaku was definitely not going to add at this point.

"You said the door back to your world was closed." Yoshi's voice was flat, as if he was barely listening to his own words. He tensed away as Kaku tried to touch his shoulder. Kaku let his hand fall again.

"That's what I thought. I was sure of it." Kaku studied eyes which were wide and searching. There was pain there, a fear and confusion Kaku wasn't sure he understood. Hell, what did Lucci do? He normally wasn't this heavy-handed, not without good reason. "I still don't know how he made it here. It...seems they opened the door on his side. After nearly two years. Did he scare you? I'm sorry. As I said, he's-"

"It's not true." Yoshio's eyes were flickering over Kaku's features faster and faster, but flinching away from meeting his gaze. 

"What is?"

"What he said. It's not true."

Oh dear. "What did he say? I'm sorry if he got a bit, um, well, once he realized you spoke his language, he would have thought it urgent to get information-"

"You're not a- a killer. You wouldn't hurt anyone. Would you? No, no you're not, he's lying."

The fridge clicked and hummed. In the living room, the TV channel changed to some ads. And deep inside, Kaku had gone dead cold. No. No, Lucci hadn't- he wouldn't-...no, no no no. 

"He said-" 

The veneer of hysteria in Yoshio's voice was muffled by a palm over his mouth. "Shh."

Yoshio stared at him, and tried to pull at his wrist. Kaku made shh again, without voicing it, and carefully lifted his hand away, speaking quietly as he did so. "Calm down. You must have misunderstood, or else he used the wrong word, he doesn't speak real Japanese, remember."

"He said that you worked for the government and that you _killed_ people," Yoshi shot back in a muted, troubled hiss. 

Shit. _Shit_. "No, he exaggerated, he does that. I told you I was a sort of policeman, that implies a certain degree of-"

"-he asked me _three times_ to tell him everything you ever told me - and if I'd ever heard you mention the words CP9 and- hm-mm!" Yoshio tried to wrench his head away from the muffling hand while Kaku set up a chorus of swearwords ringing in his mind. 

Kaku kept his voice blithe and low; it sounded as fake as a billboard smile even to his own ears. "No, there's been a miscommunication and he didn't bother to clear it up. He's like that, I'm afraid. Shh, shhh, it's okay, I'm taking my hand away, just don't shout. Listen, I think it'd be better all around if you left us alone, just for a little while, I need to talk to him and you, well, it might be best if you-"

He didn't know if it was his tone that clued Yoshi in, or if his lover just knew him too well by now. "Huh? You want me to leave? Why- wh- are you afraid he's going to _hurt_ me?!"

"No, no, of course not," though I am rather concerned that he might kill you, that's what we do to people who have heard the name CP9- Kaku mentally throttled that line of thought and maneuvered Yoshi over to the far side of the kitchen.

Yoshi looked reassured for a couple of seconds, until he stared blankly at the car keys Kaku had pressed into his hand and then at the kitchen window Kaku was opening in as much silence as he could muster. His eyes went wide with shock. "You want me to leave through the _fire escape_?" he whispered hoarsely. 

"Yes. Please, Yoshi, don't ask me why-" though his lover must have guessed now "-I just don't think it's good for you to stay here, I want you to go to Huang's- or a hotel, yes, a hotel, okay?" In the living room, the ads were replaced by a sport commentator excitedly telling the world about a good block. Oh excellent, hockey, maybe the one sport that would intrigue Lucci enough to stay glued to the screen just a little longer.

"But...can't we call the police?"

Kaku could barely keep his voice low and level at the thought of the ensuing mess. "No, they can't do anything against somebody like him, promise me you won't call them, that'd be- that'd be very bad, that'd make things very difficult."

Yoshi was staring at him. "What he said isn't true." He made it more of a statement than before, but the question was looming now, it was huge, an avalanche poised to thunder down on them. "You're not...some kind of..."

"No, Yoshi, of course not." Anything, say anything, just get him out of here. It was raining now, it'd cover the noise of the fire escape if the window was closed as long as Kaku rattled pans and kept talking. He just needed to give Yoshi a head start, Lucci didn't know the first thing about Vancouver, once Yoshi got into the car-

Yoshi opened his mouth to protest- and froze, eyes widening at a point over Kaku's shoulder.

Son of a bitch, I never even felt him move, thought Kaku as he turned around, a cold feeling crawling down his spine to die. 

Lucci was leaning against the kitchen lintel. He met Kaku's gaze and, face expressionless, lifted his hand and pointed the remote loosely over his shoulder. A click. In the living room, the match gave way to bursts of canned laughter, obscenely inappropriate. 

"Your device works better than you think," said Lucci without an ounce of inflection. "Isn't that nice to know." 

Kaku turned to face him, keeping his stance easy, open. "Lucci, I can't believe how badly you scared Yoshio back there." His mouth was so dry he was afraid some of the words might stick, but in fact they came out smoothly and calmly with a faint veneer of perplexity. Full points for his acting ability, though at this stage Kaku wasn't even sure who he was trying to fool anymore. "Why on earth did you tell him all that bullshit?"

"To see if you had," Lucci answered. Neither the man nor the pigeon had blinked yet. Predator gaze.

"You made up a bunch of nonsense just to see what I'd told him? Why didn't you just ask him? Or me, for that matter? Sometimes I think you get a little too used to cross-questioning criminals instead of dealing with normal civilians." 

Lucci didn't take the proffered line. He didn't say anything. Just took two slow steps into the kitchen. Kaku fought his instincts and stayed where he was. He was being way too jumpy. CP9's cloak of secrecy wasn't that absolute, and had no reason to be applied here, in a world which didn't know or care a fig about the World Government and its little philosophical shortcuts in the name of peace and justice. Lucci never killed without good reason, or what he thought was a good reason. He never told anyone about CP9 without good reason either, and the few times he had, death had followed - or the victims had been left in a burning mansion with the firm intention of them dying there, Strawhat intervention aside. Kaku had visions of his apartment set alight, flames roaring and gulping down the furniture, the bed, the curtains, Yoshi's body on the living room rug- but no, that'd be senseless. Even the cold and calculating side of Kaku, the assassin, couldn't see a reason to hurt Yoshio. There was no reason at all. 

...He'd seen that look in Lucci's eyes before. The emotion behind it had no name, only context. Kaku had collapsed in a snow bank, exhausted and injured beyond his ability to go on in some remote region of the Grand Line years ago. His co-worker, partner, friend and lover had stopped, walked back, crouched beside him and said, voice straightforward and with that same look on his face: "You have to keep going, I can't carry you." Not 'I won't', or 'I can't be bothered to'. I can't. I can't compromise the mission by wasting my strength, I can't give you a break. I can't be that person and neither can you. Then Lucci had walked away, adding "We'll find some shelter once night falls" as if he had absolutely no doubt that Kaku would still be with him when it did. Kaku had staggered to his feet and lurched after him.

"I take it from his reaction that you told him nothing truly sensitive. And that he'd probably not understand what true justice is about even if you'd explained it," Lucci said mildly. 

"This is a different place, and let's not talk politics, okay?" 

"I take it you didn't even start to tell him," Lucci continued as if Kaku hadn't opened his mouth. "About a lot of things."

"Lucci-"

"That's promising. That you remembered our standing orders. Other agents left this long without directives have, shall way say, forgotten their duty before. Of course, you do remember all our standing orders. Don't you?"

The rephrasing and the thrust of the question wasn't lost on Kaku who felt cold fear drip down his spine for Yoshi's sake and his own. "...You're the one who told him-...some cock and bull story about um, look, our job isn't- Yoshi is just a civilian, he has nothing to do with the WG, leave him alone."

The dark eyes flickered to Yoshi over Kaku's shoulder, a wry look. "I've left him alone most of the evening, but he didn't seem all that reassured. You're the one who panicked him, though, trying to smuggle him out of the kitchen. I don't know why you bothered, I'm not going to hurt him. He doesn't know enough to do any damage, and he means nothing to me."

Right. That's what Kaku had concluded too. There was no reason to be worried as Lucci took a few more steps into the kitchen. But Kaku's body was tensing as though preparing for Tekkai, and his instincts, his old killer instincts, were telling him something he in no way wanted to hear...

"I won't hurt him. He means nothing to me," Lucci repeated, stopping three feet away, looking him straight in the eye. 

He didn't put any particular stress on the 'I'. He didn't need to. 'You have to keep going, I can't carry you.'

And just like that, despite nearly two years of peace and tranquility and living the life of Karl Crandall...Despite that, Kaku remembered exactly why all those things were a lie.

The silence stretched for a few hollow heartbeats.

"I see," said a voice, his own. Too hoarse. He cleared his throat. His face felt oddly numb and his breath sounded abnormally loud.

_He'd never kept a tally of the people he'd killed. He felt no particular pride in their numbers; most of them had not been a challenge. Besides, he'd get to count them one day._

He glanced over his shoulder, then turned to face Yoshio, pressed into windowsill, keys tinkling in his hand as he stared at the two men.

_One day, when someone got him in his turn, he would face all his victims. He would do so without flinching, because he'd be able to tell them 'it was necessary'._

"Did you hear that, Yoshi? Did you understand what he said? He's not going to hurt you."

_And for what cold comfort it would be to them, he could tell them that at least he'd been fair._

"I'm sorry we frightened you." Kaku held out his arms. "Here. Come here, love."

_He'd never killed for pleasure. And he'd never spared anyone on a whim. Not even himself._

Yoshio stepped into his embrace, hiding between his arms. 

_And what mercy he had in him, he'd given to them all._

"There. Don't worry," Kaku whispered, a hand gently running over Yoshio's so-fine black hair in reassurance. Fingers coming to rest on the slight curve above the neck.

_The mercy of making it quick._

There was a hand fastened on Kaku's wrist, pressing into the tendon to stop his fingers from closing. In his arms, Yoshio flinched.

Kaku looked up dazedly, up to Lucci, who was shaking his head just a fraction.

"Anyway, I was ordered not to harm anyone in this world, except in self-defense," Lucci added casually, as if nothing untoward had been about to happen.

Kaku had to go sit down at the kitchen counter. A part of him - an ancient aspect of his soul which two years had not, could not erase, because it was _him_ , his cause, his beliefs, and besides there'd been too much blood...that part was reminding him that to show Lucci a weakness, a streak of emotionality would be something that his partner would make him pay for dearly later, but- fuck. Just...fuck. He rubbed his mouth with a shaking hand, fighting down nausea. Yoshio had followed him and was pressed against his other side. Kaku felt a faint stirring of weary resentment towards his lover for clinging, for being afraid, for making Kaku forget stuff, for being here, for trusting him...The weak, spiteful nature of the feeling disgusted him. Kaku got a stern hold of himself, patted Yoshio reassuringly on the shoulder and managed to fix a mild glare on Lucci instead of one set to 'hi broil'. 

Lucci did a splendid job of not giving a damn about Kaku's dirty look. "I'm not all that hungry," he announced, turning towards the living room. "I'll go and sleep some. I've been up for twenty hours running. We'll talk some more tomorrow, when we're alone. There's time before we have to get back to the door."

"Right." Kaku's whole body felt stiff and artificial, a puppet. A pull of a string turned him towards Yoshio. "Do you want-"

"I'm not hungry either," Yoshio whispered, barely audible. "Do I still have to go...?"

"Not if you don't want to." Kaku wouldn’t blame him if he did.

Yoshio's gaze flitted towards the window, but he still clung to Kaku's hand. The world was suddenly a dangerous, senseless place, and despite what he'd learned and what he must have guessed, he still thought Kaku would defend him. He thought he was safe here, with Kaku. "I...I'll go to bed." 

Through the open window came a wet, heavy breeze that filled the emptied kitchen with the smell of gutter trash and car exhaust until Kaku went to close it. Then he had a bite to eat because his body was demanding food, and because he didn't know what else to do or where else to go in his own apartment. It was shortly after ten. He was about to make do with a nap at the kitchen table, but then decided to go see if Yoshio had managed to fall asleep. Hattori was perched on the back of the couch like a sentinel when Kaku made his way through the living room. He did no more than glance that way. 

His lover was awake, but made no move when Kaku padded in on soft feet. Kaku lay down on his side of the bed and waited, but Yoshio never turned around or spoke, or asked any question he'd be afraid of getting an answer to. The night seemed to stand still, hiding from tomorrow like the cat crouched beneath their bed with wide eyes cautious and unblinking fixed on the bedroom door separating them from the large open space of the living room.

 

 

Kaku got up silently as soon as he felt Lucci stir downstairs with the first grey minutes of dawn. Yoshio was dozing in a way that would not feel restful when he eventually awoke. Kaku left him to catch whatever sleep he could.

Lucci was in the bathroom, wiping his hands on a towel. "We have forty four more hours before we have to be at the gate," he said without preamble. "Show me around."

"Show you around what? The apartment? Vancouver? The continent? Planet earth?" After a sleepless night watching his lover suffer but with that single moment of lethal intent laying between them like a sword, forbidding him to reach out, Kaku was now in the kind of mood in which he used to assassinate particularly annoying targets once upon a time. 

"Start with the city and work your way out," said Lucci, indifferent to the temper of a weakling who had the gall at being upset over a near-miss of murder.

"Come on, then. We'll eat breakfast on the way. Leave Hattori here, please. We don't want to stand out, and I don't think they'll let you into the restaurant with a pigeon sitting on your shoulder." Kaku left a scribbled note for Yoshio on the kitchen table. 'Taking him for a drive, be back in a few hours' and if Yoshio wasn't there when they returned, that was probably for the best.

The number of cars sweeping by the road past the garage reminded Kaku abruptly that it was Thursday. It seemed an incongruous thought. But yes, it was Thursday, a workday, and he was taking the car, which would leave Yoshio without means of getting to St Xavier. But he doubted his lover would be all that interested in showing up for today's shift. He could call in sick. Explain he'd come down with a bad case of his partner's ex showing up and turning out to be a lunatic or a killer or possibly both.

Lucci got into the car in a way that indicated he at least had a clue how to work the door handle, if not a seat belt. Good information gathering skills. Kaku remembered applying the same line of thinking nearly two years ago. It felt like another person entirely. 

Kaku drove around the corner and parked abruptly near the curb under a 'No Parking' sign. He stared at the steering wheel until he managed to say, "I did not appreciate that last night. At all."

Kaku knew full well it hadn't been done with his appreciation in mind. It'd been a test. And though killing someone for a test seemed callous to the point of obscene, the two CP9 agents moved in different spheres and to the beat of a war-drum. In that optic, it did not matter that Yoshio was an innocent bystander who couldn't hurt them. If Kaku started to pick and choose which orders to follow, to question who had the right to live or die, well, just where would he stop? What right- what bloody right did _he_ have to say no, please spare him, he's a kind man, he's my friend? And what would he say on his day of reckoning then? He would have to face all his victims, and they'd mostly been innocent, and some had been kind, and they'd all had loved ones, and two years without killing (except once) was never going to erase that.

And of course if he'd held his hand, Lucci might have made an object lesson of killing Yoshio anyway, and just possibly Kaku as well. That had counted too, though Kaku was unwilling to examine how much it had influenced his actions as it added an extra degree of unpleasantness to it all. Yes, he was a survivor, but that wasn't always something that made him proud.

Either way, he really didn't have to tell Lucci what had gone through his mind, because his fellow agent had seen enough to be satisfied. Lucci had always had the gift of interpreting orders creatively, and if he'd had any doubt as to Kaku's mettle, he'd have let him break Yoshio's neck as ultimate proof and then justified it in the report by claiming the victim was a threat by dint of knowing too much or some similar bull. The point Kaku was making now, glaring at the steering wheel, was that obeying an order to kill without question was one thing; bearing the brunt of Lucci's occasional cruel streak was quite another, something that was not done between colleagues who'd long ago established a form of mutual trust and respect, and if Lucci was hoping to bring Kaku back to work with him in any way, shape or form, he would not change his mind about Yoshio's death sentence tomorrow.

"Drive," said Lucci with a dismissive gesture, then looked out the window as Kaku restarted the car. Kaku's mind moved on just as surely and professionally, going over what he could show Lucci in the next two days that would be as concise, informative and in-depth as possible. And then they'd go home, the world he'd longed for, where he belonged, and where there was a place for him, unlike here. No, there really was no place for him here.


	10. Chapter 10

Lucci braced his hands against the metal railing and looked around. "Interesting city."

"It's called Vancouver."

"They don't have any enemies, do they," said Lucci, thoughtfully studying the sea front to the east and the skyscrapers beyond it. Kaku had taken him to a scenic point near the university. 

"They-...it's a bit complicated, but no, they never thought it necessary to maintain fortifications and naval defenses around Vancouver."

Lucci leaned against the railing, the sweep of Vancouver a sight against the grey-blue sea. Kaku looked at the city with new eyes as he glanced from his oldest friend to the view. The skyscrapers were defenseless towers of glass all over again, the sheer pressure of people made the skin between the shoulder blades itch, and the air was thick with unknown scents and pollution. 

Instead of commenting on any of that, Lucci said: "Was it hard to infiltrate?"

Kaku shrugged. "Yes. They have...a centralized bureau of information. Of sorts. Very efficient, easy for the authorities to access." Kaku was not about to explain computer networking now, not without coffee first. "Fortunately there are gaps."

"There are always gaps," said Lucci with a mirthless smile.

"I managed to find them. With...a bit of work. I..." Kaku scratched the back of his head, nudging the plastic strap on the back of his hockey-team cap. "I had to kill somebody. A contract on a gangster in exchange for a set of fake papers. I know that's against regulations, but I had my back against the wall, and-" 

A dismissive wave of the hand interrupted him. "As long as they can't trace it back to you, I don't really care. Our directives may be our guides back home, but in the circumstances there was no way you'd be able to insert yourself into a wholly new society without sacrifices. If your target was weak enough to go down despite all the advantages of home ground and knowledge he had on you, he probably deserved it anyway. Though I think we'll keep your indiscretion to ourselves. The upper echelon of Mariejoie is already upset at you as it is. You know how touchy they are about contacting newly discovered islands along the Grand Line, so you can imagine how overjoyed they were when they learned which of their agencies had seen one of its members stumble onto an entire new world. Some of them were telling our director that you should have stayed where you were, near the gate, and waited for us. The fact that the entire thing was completely and totally unplanned seems to have escaped them."

"Stayed where I was, huh? And just how would I have survived for nearly two years out in the middle of nowhere near the highway? Should I have lived off of rainwater and roadkill?"

"Cipher Pol will take care of the whiners. We know better." Lucci was still looking at Vancouver with that hunter's gaze. "We are what we are made to be. A densely populated area will present its own dangers, but cover as well. We're not an army, to camp out and live off the land. We're infiltrators. I'd have done the same. Though probably ended up in a different place," he added with a sideways glance. Kaku gave him a stony look in return. Lucci did not think much of Yoshio and the quiet life he represented, Kaku got that already. And did this single-minded feline even realize the difficulties of integrating into this society and the extent of Kaku's isolation during his two years in this place? 

"I thought the door was closed. Forever. I thought I was cut off. I thought-..." Kaku bent his head until the peak of his green cap hid his face. His hands were clenched to fists in his pockets as he remembered a green-and-blue ball and the absolute knowledge he was lost.

He couldn’t see Lucci shrug, but he could hear it in his next words. "You weren't far wrong in believing that. The door wasn't a door as such anymore, more like a rift into nothing. It was noticed when they cleared out the rubble from the explosion. Anything going through a certain stretch of space tended to disappear, or disintegrate. It was our first indication that you and Blueno might have been in the process of arriving when the place blew up. By the way, you'll be pleased to know that Spandam personally persecuted the Navy intel group who'd given you two a layout of the command bunker and forgot to mention that the room next to it was used as an ammo dump."

"I feel so much better," muttered Kaku, trying to remember what that mission had been about.

"Professor Vegapunk took a personal interest in the matter, which is why anything happened at all. He eventually found a way of opening the rift fully, and he's the one who determined what happened and where it might lead to. But it takes three days for the generator to charge up enough to open the door, and that was only once the thing was actually stabilized and no longer threatened to strand anybody else. They sent a few Marines through first. If it'd been dangerous, they'd have been no great loss. They didn't have to go far to confirm that you and possibly Blueno had ended up there. But you weren't around at that point, and what they could tell from a quick reconnaissance indicated that the place was otherwise inhabited and the technology advanced. They fell back at that point, which was all they could do. A lot of talking later, a mission to retrieve you was decided."

"And you got ordered to go."

Lucci was silent for a brief moment, then he shrugged. "I volunteered. And insisted."

Kaku looked at him in surprise.

His friend was still studying Vancouver, not meeting his eyes. "I know how you think, I'm as good an infiltrator as you are, it seemed reasonable to send me. Vegapunk belongs to the Marines, which meant the usual saber rattling between them and Cipher Pol, but in the end they agreed, since it was a CP9 agent who'd been stranded here."

"You came to get me...?"

"CP9 had already lost you, Blueno and Fukurou - injured last year, not fatally," Lucci added, as Kaku made to interrupt. "He's still a huge blabbermouth. We put him in charge of our intelligence gathering bureau. Not surprisingly, he's pretty good at it, and he has an assistant whose full-time job is to keep him from babbling anything outside the office. But he's out of action permanently, so we're down to five people: myself, that idiot Jyabura, Kumadori, Kalifa, and one new recruit you've not yet met. Hard to find more, and the world needs us now more than ever."

"Oh? Why, what-"

"We have a new Pirate King," said Lucci in a voice that dropped to a near growl on the last two words. "And that's just the beginning. You'll find out soon enough. The situation here is our immediate concern. The one back home will be waiting for us when we get back, I can update you then." 

Right. Going home. He was going home. The thought felt brittle, unreal, like a feverish dream.

"Apart from that person," Lucci said, faint contempt a substitute for Yoshio's name, "did you tell anybody else of your origins?"

"No. I wasn't sure what that would imply. They might have gotten me back home. I was researching the possibilities. But then again, they might have locked me up and dissected me. I came close enough to incarceration or commitment several times already just trying to pass myself off as one of them."

"Oh really? And do these people have Rokushiki users of our caliber?"

"No, but I know what you're asking, and taking on the whole world was not an option. As you said just now, we're infiltrators, not an army. It'd have been suicide, anyway. They have weapons- well, you saw some of them on TV last night. Besides, there's seven billion of them and one of me. Discretion seemed infinitely wiser."

"Seven what?" Lucci asked, looking around at him.

"Seven billion. Give or take."

"What does that word mean?"

"What, billion? Oh, right, that's a term I learned here. I think they invented it out of necessity, one we never had. It means a thousand million."

"A thousand times seven million?" Lucci asked slowly, looking back out over the city with new intensity. "People?"

"Yes. They have a lot more landmass than we do. And...other reasons." Mariejoie, the center of the World Government, one of the three great powers along the Grand Line, had a million inhabitants, was considered dangerously overpopulated, and had only half the headcount of metropolitan Vancouver.

There was a thoughtful silence, and then Lucci said, "I find myself suddenly reassured that the doorway can't let through more than half a dozen people at a time. But we need to extract without fault tomorrow. It's imperative we don't reveal our origins here. Don't give me that look, agent," Lucci added without breaking away from his examination of the city. "Your little friend is safe until I receive directives to the contrary, and I doubt they'd order me to remove someone who could eventually serve as interpreter if we decide to establish some form of contact. It's not as if he can prove anything to the authorities in the meantime. Right?" That last word showed a flash of fangs, and Kaku hastily reassured Lucci that Yoshio had no concrete evidence of Kaku's origins whatsoever.

Lucci turned away, dismissing the city for now. "That place over there is serving food and drink. I'm hungry, and tired of field rations."

"Yes, I'm hungry too, but I'll take you somewhere else. I'm not sure that food would agree with you at this point. It took me months to get used to some of the stuff they put in it."

Lucci continued to watch the two tourists on the restaurant's deck as if they were specimens under a microscope. "How do they feed seven billion people?" 

"With considerable difficulty in some cases. It's a very different place, but they still have the same problems we do. This way, we have to take the car again."

"Even those mobile cannons we saw last night would be puny against such numbers," said Lucci, falling into step. "What kind of weapons do they have to keep these masses in line?"

"Oh boy, you don't want to know." Kaku fished the car keys from his pockets and shook his head. "What am I saying. Of course you want to know. Let's have breakfast first." Kaku wasn't sure he wanted to face this conversation on an empty stomach.

As the Honda trundled along, Lucci watched the city around them, eyes noting every detail, asking a few questions and expecting concise and informative answers. Kaku could feel himself under the same scrutiny as he turned the car towards the Yaletown district. 

"So what do you do here? What kind of work? Security guard?" The last was said with a cynical smile. It was an old saw; what on earth do you do with a retired CP9 agent, they're not easily re-employable.

"Actually, no, I would never have made it past the background checks. I worked as a dishwasher for a time."

"Fallback plan number one," Lucci murmured, though if Kaku fine-tuned his analysis of that tone, he'd have to say it was more commiserating than mocking. Lucci had been through the thick and thin of infiltrations too. 

"It's always good, in all countries and in all worlds. But now I work in a gym. I passed my certification in March, and I teach a combo of martial arts and self-defense. I have another job for those days I don't have classes, an occasional gig but it pays well. It's-...complicated, I don't think I can explain."

"Try me," Lucci suggested, studying the city outside his window in a way that suggested nothing in this claptrap of cement and glass would be beyond the grasp of his dangerous intellect.

Kaku stopped at a pedestrian crossing, smiled at the senior citizen waiting there and said: "I work at Vancouver Film Studios as an extra and a stunt double for action movies." Then he laid bets with himself on how long it would take Lucci to admit that he was going to need elaboration on that after all.

 

When they got back to the apartment, Kaku left Lucci in the kitchen with a Japanese-print newspaper and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. The only indication that Yoshio had moved while they were away was yesterday's clothes he'd pulled on. 

"Hey. How are you doing?" 

No answer. Yoshio was sitting on the side of the bed with his back to the door and Kaku, looking at the grey day outside. The spill of his shoulders spoke of defensiveness and depression.

Kaku sat down on the covers at an inoffensive distance. "Are you hungry? Did you have anything at all this morning? We can eat an early lunch if you want, we bought some food at-"

"I told you everything," said Yoshio, staring out the window. 

"What?"

"I told you about my family. About my mother and Lia who still won't speak to me. I t-told you how Mike left me to go back to- to his girlfriend, how I-...I told you everything, and you told me nothing."

"Yoshio..."

"You certainly didn't tell me the truth about _him_."

Kaku didn't say anything, since even a highly upset Yoshio would have to realize that Lucci was not something that could be easily described.

"You really are...what he said..." 

"No. No, Yoshio, he painted a totally skewed picture." The lies came easily, Kaku didn't even have to think about them, or wonder if they came out of their standing orders to conceal their existence or a wish to spare his lover a little bit of the blow that was coming. "Lucci has been doing this job since he was thirteen, and it's warped him," he added, quite truthfully this time, a truth that had long ago ceased to bother him. "But we're not hitmen or whatever he might have made it sound like. The truth is, I'm something of an undercover policeman, as I told you, and also a sort of spy."

"...A spy."

"Yes." 

Yoshio chuckled, a sound like a sob as he buried his face in his hands. 

"Sometimes I have to take shortcuts to do my job and protect my government, but I'm not some heartless killer." Just an assassin and an infiltrator and a conman and a liar. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you more. I still can't, it's confidential. State secrets."

"You're leaving. With him." Yoshio spoke through his hands. 

Kaku opened his mouth and it suddenly came to him that so far nobody had asked him if he _wanted_ to go back, not Lucci, not even Yoshio, not Kaku himself. The answer was that obvious, yet for some reason Kaku felt as if he was ten years old and repeating a lesson he'd been taught when he said, "Yes. I'm sorry. My arrival here was an accident, I have to go back."

"You said you loved me," Yoshio whispered.

"I do, you saved my life, I do care for you, but I can't stay-" Kaku stopped. From the way Yoshio had suddenly turned his head away, he'd not missed the change from 'love' to 'care'. 

"Yoshio-"

Yoshio stood up, twisting away from the hand on his shoulder, and went to stand near the window with his back to Kaku. 

 

Lucci was terribly disappointed that they would not have the opportunity to take an armored tank apart, but Kaku made up for it by driving them down for an afternoon trip to the naval base on Vancouver Island. The ferry journey back was spent discussing intercontinental missiles, identity fraud, computer networks and other fun topics. Lucci, with his usual grasp of the important, dismissed the whole 'nuclear' side of this world under the heading 'awesome amount of damage but cannot be replicated at home due to lack of certain rare metals and a lot of technology', and focused instead on the recipe for better conventional explosives, along with details on the combustion engine and electrical generators. Kaku realized, a little bleakly, that he knew more about these things than he'd realized, as if all those hours spent learning about this world in the library and eventually on the computer had been designed to allow him to write a report that would give the World Government a new edge when he got back. He wasn't sure what to make of that. 

Yoshio wasn't home when they returned, even though it was past ten PM. Kaku called around out of duty. He got a hold of his lover at the second try, at the latter's desk in St. Xavier. Yoshio told him he had to work late in a subdued tone that ended in a bitten-off word and the click-breee of the phone being abruptly hung up. Kaku left him a portion of a late dinner in the fridge. Lucci ate his share and went to watch TV and sleep on the couch without a comment. Yoshio didn't come home that night. 

The next day, and to conclude the strangest tourist trip Vancouver had likely ever seen, Kaku approached Marina Leyland, the armaments specialist of the film studio's special effects team, and introduced her to his good-looking second cousin from Latvia (the most obscure country Kaku could come up with, ideal for someone who could not speak English, or Latvian either). She obligingly took them out to a shooting range where Lucci was able to get an appreciation of this world's weaponry up close. Fortunately his sense of discretion was stronger than his desire to shoot a fellow agent with Marina's Beretta 9mm to see how Tekkai would hold up. 

"We could break into the place we visited this morning, on our way out of town," said Lucci, leaning against the cabin wall as the elevator slowly cranked them up. "They have plenty of guns there."

"Yes, the shooting range has plenty of guns. They also have our contact details and names in their ledger. Or in your case a phony pseudonym that sounds about as Latvian as you are, but I don't think they'll notice _if_ they don't have a break-in that will involve the police. The cops here are pretty astute, they'll want to talk to any of the non-regular patrons who showed up in the last few days, and they'll be ever so curious as to why we're both missing from our given address, or indeed the planet."

"Why didn't you give them an alias too, then?" 

Kaku fished his keys from his pocket. "Because they wanted to see my driver's license. My ID. No, I don't have fakes handy."

Lucci gave him a fleeting 'maybe you should' look before preceding Kaku through the open door.

"There really is no way of buying one of those automatically loading pistols?" 

"Not legally, no, the permits- Hi, Yoshio. You're back early." 

Yoshio didn't point out that he'd worked all night and was thus entitled to come home at a decent hour. He was sitting on the first steps up to the mezzanine, coat still on and a scarf drooping from his hands, staring at the cat hiding under the couch. He glanced fleetingly at them, at Lucci, but didn't say anything.

With a noise like thunder in the tense, unhappy silence, Lucci dumped out the contents of his shopping bags onto the coffee table. The cat hunched further under the couch, then darted out and belted towards the kitchen. Lucci ignored every other living thing in the room, apart from absently passing a finger over Hattori's head once the pigeon had flapped down from the curtain rod to his shoulder. He started to sort through their purchases: an atlas, a few Japanese books, a first-year physics manual, a tourist guide to Vancouver, a simplified walk-through of a coal-powered plant Kaku had printed off the library internet, another of a nuclear power plant (just in case), a guide to car mechanics, some cartridges Lucci had pocketed on the shooting range, a stainless steel wrench gleaming fitfully in the early afternoon light from the window, batteries, a gameboy and a TV remote for the electronic chips inside...just about everything except for a semi-automatic and the kitchen sink. Lucci started putting things away into the rucksack he'd brought with him on the trip over.

"Go get your things," he told Kaku without looking up from his work. "We'll leave as soon as you're ready."

Kaku gave his watch a sharp glance. "Now? We've still got six hours."

"It will take us that long to get there." 

"Not in a car, it won't."

"We're not taking any vehicles. Unless you want to dispose of it."

"...Right."

Yoshio's hands had tightened into fists, strangling his scarf, at Lucci's words. He stared straight ahead, eyes wide and blind as Kaku walked past him, climbed the stairs and picked up his bags in the bedroom. He'd packed last night; he'd had nothing else to do. The packing was his last lie. He didn't need any of the things he'd bought here, there was nothing that would serve him when he went from this new life back to the old one, but it would give the impression he'd left for a long trip if he took all his papers and some clothes and sundry possessions. He didn't have much of the latter. Odd how he'd never accumulated much, even after living in this apartment for over a year.

When Kaku made his way down to the living room level once more, Lucci was tightening the straps of his bag. The dark eyes scanned the apartment one last time, every movement echoed by Hattori in their creepy symbiosis. Lucci got to his feet and headed towards the shelf near the window. He picked up the framed picture of Yoshio and Kaku, smashed it with one neat movement against the shelf's corner and extracted the photo. Yoshio shot up at the crack of breaking glass, white as a sheet despite his natural skin tone. That was unnecessary, Kaku thought darkly, deep within the privacy of his own mind.

"Is this the only picture of you?" Lucci asked, shaking away shards of glass and stuffing the photo in his pocket.

"Yes." Because Kaku had checked last night. Damn his eyes, he'd gone through Yoshio's photo albums and PC and removed any trace of his passage. Yet he'd forgotten the picture he saw every day when he sat down to watch TV, tried to coax the cat onto his lap or curled up on the couch with Yoshio. 

"Let's go." Lucci shouldered his pack and made his way towards the door. 

Kaku nodded, and turned towards Yoshio. 

"We're off," he said needlessly. 

Yoshio didn't react to the gentle touch on his shoulder, his eyes fixed blindly on Kaku's collarbone. "Stay," he whispered. There was no hope in his voice.

"I can't." Kaku pulled him into his arms and held him. There was an interesting sensation between his shoulder blades which was the feeling of Lucci's scornful stare drilling through, but at this point Kaku had a hard time caring. He'd been ready to kill Yoshio on a single non-verbal command two days ago, but he could not bring himself to be cruel, that just wasn't in him. 

He kissed his lover gently. "Take care of yourself. You're stronger than you give yourself credit for." He could almost feel Lucci's contempt quadruple. Kaku should have spoken in English rather than Japanese, which had always been their more intimate language before. That'd have taken care of Lucci, but not of the part of Kaku which had never ceased to exist and which was sarcastically informing him that if he'd wanted to leave on a trite comment, he could have just as well dropped a Hallmark card on the kitchen table and disappeared before Yoshio got home this morning. It'd have been faster, more efficient - and did he even _remember_ how badly Lucci was going to make him pay for all this weak sentimentality when they got back home?

Yoshio didn't say anything when Kaku turned. He remained standing in the center of their living room, staring at the carpet as the two agents exited the apartment. A part of him had to be relieved to see them go, despite everything. 

 

Lucci applied CP9 paranoia to their exit from Vancouver, detouring through some streets and then taking Soru shortcuts through the countryside once they were outside of the town. Kaku followed without a word. Vancouver's suburbs passed them hour after hour, growing sparser, until the Trans-Canada, electric pylons and the distant roar of cars were the only sign of the city. Kaku trudged, boots crunching through scree and water. It had rained for the first three hours of their trip, one of Vancouver's steady downpours. The past twenty months were dwindling like the city lights behind them. The future was an invisible door to a past life which felt like a myth now. Kaku trudged along in stasis, in a state stuck to the present. It felt like falling through Blueno's door all over again. 

"We're here," Lucci said, as they crested a small hill and spotted the rock sign Kaku had left, what felt like ages ago. "The gate's already open," he added, a note of tension creeping into his voice. Looking over Lucci's shoulder, Kaku saw a signal flare, the kind the Marines used, sputtering in the muddy wash of pebbles.

Lucci was down the slope in the blink of an eye. Kaku followed him a second later. 

"It's still there. We go, now," said Lucci, staring straight up. Kaku nodded and his feet hit air as Geppou lifted them both up towards a slice of darkness above their heads. Vancouver was behind him, peeking over the horizon at his back, the buildings, the sea, the open docks and great rearing towers. 

Kaku didn't look back. A CP9 agent never did once the mission was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter which I will post on Sunday.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for excessive Lucci in this chapter.  
> I mean, excessive violence.  
> ...No, I think I got it right the first time.

It was Saturday. Kaku had had plans for Saturday. They didn't involve a comprehensive medical by masked and gowned Navy medics in the remains of a burned-down rebel compound somewhere on the Grand Line. Kaku had been doing okay up to now with the changes in his situation; something about Lucci's presence was very grounding. But Lucci had disappeared off for a debriefing shortly after they'd come through the gate, leaving Kaku to the medics who were treating him like a plague victim. He was in an isolated infirmary ward that had apparently been built out of clapboard just for him, surrounded once more by the familiar chatter of Trade Lingo as the doctors discussed a urine sample. Through the screened window blew a sea-wind rich with the scents of saltwater and untreated sewage...Kaku felt like he was dreaming all over again.

"Enjoying yourself?" Lucci asked, showing up a couple of uncomfortable hours later. 

"Having a blast," Kaku answered, words muffled by the shirt he was pulling on. He'd been finally allowed to get dressed in the clothes a gowned and masked orderly had thrust at him. They felt rough in contrast to the outfits he'd grown used to; plain undyed linen trousers and long-sleeved top to match. Hospital wear, or possibly a convict's uniform. 

"This way, then."

Kaku followed Lucci to a clapboard room with nothing but a square table and single chair at its dead center. Lucci gestured curtly for him to sit down, then leaned his back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. Kaku looked blankly at the large, long window inserted into the wall, through which he could see a gallery, the kind where they brought witnesses to view a line-up of the usual suspects.

"Okay, I give up," he finally said. "Why am I sitting in an interrogation room?" 

"It's what we had on hand. They knocked it together a year ago while processing the rebels and those citizens who were accused of helping them, and they never took it down." 

"And why am I here?" Kaku asked, staring at the window. There was a long table full of papers on the other side, with a carafe and a large plate of half-demolished sandwiches. It seemed that somebody had a habit of eating the top piece of bread and the meat and none of the vegetables. Kaku felt a rumble in his stomach. He'd lost track of his last meal.

"Interview. I've already given a brief summary of your time over there-" Lucci was interrupted when the door to the gallery beyond the window banged opened and a small man shot through like the place was on fire. He glued himself to the glass, staring at Kaku with naked curiosity. He was followed more sedately by a second man bearing the long-suffering expression of assistants to eccentrics everywhere. He closed the door and took up a discreet spot near the table, notebook in hand.

"Finally! It's you, right?!" the small man burst out in excitement. 

"Um..." Kaku looked to Lucci for an explanation. 

"Yes, sir, this is agent Kaku, the man I brought back. This is professor Vegapunk," Lucci added for Kaku's benefit. "He has total clearance." 

Total clearance, old words that described what Vegapunk was allowed to know about Kaku, CP9 and their activities. Despite the 'total', there were automatic black-outs to that information. Kaku hoped he'd remember what they were. It felt like he'd been in Vancouver much longer than he'd ever been at Water 7.

Vegapunk was a wizened gnome of indeterminate age. Grayish hair sprouted out of his large ears and marched down his jowls to form a short bottle-brush beard that devoured the rest of his face in two bites. His eyes had the crazy-professor gleam to them, and he talked in short outbursts that indicated his brain worked five times faster than his mouth ever could. 

"We need to talk! Now! There's so much to ask! I wish we didn't have this blasted glass here. But you're in quarantine. I recommended it, especially when I heard how many people there were over there. The higher the population density, the greater the germ pool and oh yeah, damn, gotta be careful. The Marines we sent before were okay, but they were only there for an hour. You were there for nearly two years, eating their food, drinking their water, and, ah-..." Vegapunk broke off and glanced at Lucci as if he'd just hit a notion that perplexed him.

"Sleeping with someone," Kaku supplied.

"Ah yes. For two years! TWO YEARS! Tell me all about it!"

"About sleeping with someone?" Kaku asked, the bug-under-a-microscope feeling prodding him into being voluntarily obtuse.

"No, you young fool, about Otherworld!"

"Is that what you call it?"

"Yes! No, I wanted to call it Realworld, but the brass just couldn't get their mind wrapped around the concept. Idiots! Oh yes, it's the real world," Vegapunk added, catching Kaku's puzzled expression. "I had a preliminary talk with your colleague while you were getting your medical. He said you'd figured out you were in a reflection of our world, and I have to say, if somebody other than me had to be the one to fall through that hole, I'm glad it was somebody halfway smart. But our two worlds aren't equivalent. The one you were in is the real one. Ours is the abnormality. Yep."

That didn't do much for Kaku's sense of reality. "But...how can you know that?"

"Devil Fruit, my boy! Devil Fruit! We have them, they don't. Right?"

"No, they don't have Devil Fruit."

"I knew it! We sure have 'em, I've studied them a lot. Maybe you've heard of my research? We have a lot of other very strange phenomenon that no amount of science can explain, and let me tell you, my predecessors and I spent our lives trying. And we're considerably smarter than a dozen of you, for all you seem brighter than some of the jarheads in the admiralty. Our world is a blip, a massive cosmological error. It's like the real universe got a stomach ache and hurled us up on a wave of reality disruptions. We're a distorted mirror of Realworld, and Devil Fruit are symptoms of this, three-dimensional projections of a part of our world where reality is weak and twisted. Oh, but it's not just Devil Fruit, it's all the Grand Line phenomenon and the weather and the totally inexplainable way our landmasses are stretched out and the proximity of the moon and a hundred of other factors that have been giving our physicists aneurysms since we first figured out what gravity was three hundred years ago. And now we know why! It's because our world is fundamentally made of baloney! That's the best I can do to explain it to a layman - you get it, right? A five year old would, but when I did my exposé, all the brass got this funny dead-fish look on their faces."

Kaku had a feeling he knew which look that was. He rubbed his face to save himself some form of dignity. "I sort of see what you mean. Back in...Otherworld-" Kaku's nervous system could not cope with 'Realworld' anymore than the brass "- there were speculative books about what they called parallel dimensions- worlds, and-"

There was a loud thump. Professor Vegapunk had hurled himself against the glass like a bird who hadn't noticed the window was closed. " _Tell me all about them!_ "

"Um, now?"

"Yes! No! Start at the beginning!" The prof flailed behind the glass. The patient-looking assistant went to a sideboard for a glass and the carafe. "And then tell me everything! Sequentially! _But right now_! Damn it, Rodgers, I don't want any bloody water, pour it in your ear."

"I was there for a long time, it'll take a while," said Kaku, glad he was sitting down. 

"Yes, yes, I know." The professor seemed to come back down to a plane more closely connected with reality - whatever that was, Kaku wasn't too sure anymore. "Just give me the bare bones for now. We have a few minutes before I have to examine the status of the Otherworld door again. The generator can't run more than a few hours at a time, and it has to be shut down gently, so very gently to stop the fracture-waves from collapsing in on themselves, and maybe lose the singularity altogether this time. It needs my supervision. Start talking and don't stop until I leave, and when I leave I want you to start writing. Write down everything, every experience, every thought, every detail. You'll have until tonight here, then you'll be moved to another part of the compound. You'll be in quarantine, but you won't be alone. Your friend there was only exposed for a short time, but to be on the safe side, and to provide you with some company, he's volunteered to share your isolation." 

Kaku looked over his shoulder at Lucci lounging back against the wall like the Boatman waiting for a passenger. 

"Peachy," he said in English, trying to keep out of his tone the stirrings of a bad premonition. 

 

Cramps in his hand and fingers woke Kaku. There was no fuzzy moment of transition where he might have wondered why it was so cold and if Yoshi had hogged all the blankets again. Reality was waiting for him the instant he opened his eyes, as present and solid as the ragged wooden beam over his head. 

Kaku rubbed eyelids that felt like sandpaper and then massaged his writing hand. True to his word, Vegapunk had kept him alternatively talking and scribbling at the desk all day and well into the night. Lucci had brought them some food, helped Kaku get some of the concepts through to the professor (who had to go and have a bit of a lie-down on two occasions), and lit a kerosene lamp so Kaku could continue to write, draw and illustrate. Then Lucci had led the sleepwalking castaway out of that room, through two barred doors and into the shelter of a half-destroyed building where a camp bed invited Kaku to collapse.

He must have only slept a few hours. The air was sharp and sweet with morning scents. Kaku would have appreciated the scent of coffee a hell of a lot more. Paper-wrapped field rations on a stool near the cracked wall caught his eye. They hadn't been there when he'd crashlanded into bed last night. Kaku glanced around, the same uneasiness worrying at him, but that didn't stop him from getting the food and wolfing it down. Ahhhh, the half-remembered taste of total blandness...Back in Otherworld, they'd seemed so intent on packing the maximum olfactory sensation into every bite. Everything had to be sweeter, saltier, richer, crunchier, it had to be _more_ , an experience to shanghai the senses and the wallet. By contrast, this food's statement was, "You'll live. Be thankful." Strange...Kaku had grown up with the one, had become acclimatized to the other, and now both positions seemed to be lacking in an indefinable way. 

Kaku glanced around as he ate. He knew this place: the outerworks of the fortress the Marines had attacked so long ago. Servant's quarters, guard stations, armory, all squashed between inner and outer walls. The area had been partly destroyed by the fire spreading from the explosion in the main building as well as the subsequent attack, but here or there was an outcropping, a little observatory dome, the shape of the murderholes above a distant gate, that were familiar, like a jarring sense of deja-vu amongst the destruction he'd not witnessed. Kaku hunched his shoulders, fighting a deeply bedded sense of displacement. 

The shelter he'd slept in had at one point been a small forge turning out cheap armor and sharpening foot soldiers' swords. One of the walls was rubble, but there was enough of a roof left to protect him if it rained. When Vegapunk had said 'quarantine' yesterday, Kaku had assumed he'd be returned to the infirmary. The destruction and the silence surrounding the forge were gloomy backdrops, but it was still the better option in Kaku's opinion than that clapboard plague hospice. 

Prickles ran up his spine. The rations were suddenly ash in his mouth. 

Kaku swallowed carefully. "Good morning, Lucci," he said without turning around.

There was no answer. Kaku put down the food unfinished and drank from the flask of water near the stool. The liquid had an odd taste, sharp with a hint of copper and moldy wood. Kaku wiped his hands against his linen shirt, glanced around to see if he'd forgotten anything - what there might be to forget at this juncture, he couldn't have said - and then turned to face the presence behind him.

Lucci was crouched on the low wall around the forge's courtyard, watching him. Kaku was put in mind of a leopard perched on a tree branch observing a weakened gazelle. Hattori was on a broken beam overhead instead of on his master's shoulder, another bad sign. 

"You've put on weight. And it's not muscle."

"Hello to you too," Kaku muttered.

Lucci dropped from the wall on totally silent feet. "I suppose it was inevitable that you would decline in the circumstances." 

"As a matter of fact," said Kaku, even as he knew he shouldn't argue, "the doctor who recently gave me a physical back in Vancouver said he'd never seen anyone in better shape and asked me if I was a professional athlete."

"Yes. Pitiful standards. You could see that just looking at the people walking down the street." Lucci stalked towards him. 

Kaku stood his ground as Lucci circled him. He could _feel_ the man's movement as well as hear the soft footsteps. His heart beat strong and ready, adrenaline tingled in his veins, and despite what was bound to follow, Kaku was left almost breathless as he realized how much he'd missed this sensation. 

"We have a couple of weeks before they let us out," said Lucci. "We won't get you back into shape in that time, but we can make a little headway."

"Right you are," said Kaku and ducked, Soru getting him out of reach of the punch that had whistled past his ears. 

"I did practice my Rokushiki back there," he said from the wall where Lucci had been a minute ago. 

"Good for you," said Lucci indulgently and disappeared. Kaku tensed- threw himself forward on instinct, but too late. The scything kick caught him mid-air and sent him smacking down into the ground.

"If you've been practicing, then we can skip the warm-up and go straight to the preliminary exercises," said Lucci, standing on that same wall, feet apart, hands in his pockets, looking down at him.

Kaku rose to his knees, wiped his gritty palms against his trousers. This...was going to hurt.

That bastard Lucci kept his hands in his pockets for the rest of the day. 

 

There was a well off to one side of the compound. The water was murky, the explosion and fire had polluted the source, but it was good enough to bathe in. Kaku rinsed off the sweat and patted bruises and his stiffening body dry with what was left of his linen clothes. He went to bed naked, no longer feeling cold. This was a test. He should have known. He _had_ known, on some level. He had lost some of his strength, and his life's calling allowed no weaknesses. It was a test but it was also a training program; in the same way war could be said to be a way of resolving a difference perhaps, but training nonetheless. Yeah, he should feel thankful to Lucci for this. Really.

The next day, it was apparent that Lucci had been taking it extremely easy on him. When Kaku crawled to bed that night, barely able to lift his limbs to sort them out on the thin mattress, he was too tired and stunned and sore to even think anymore.

After that, he lost count of the days. 

 

They all started the same. He'd wake up to find field rations on the stool near his bed. They steadily increased in quantity to match his physical output. The taste was still the same, but he was past caring now. They were all he would have to eat that day, so he polished them off religiously. Then he'd get dressed. The clothes were also new each day, since no normal outfit could take the kind of punishment he was soaking up. Calf-length black pants and t-shirts, destroyed by nightfall and dropped in the refuse pile near the half-demolished latrines, to reappear intact the next day beneath the stool in the forge as if in a never-ending nightmare cycle. Lucci must have a whole batch of them, or was getting them dropped from the walls above where guards could occasionally be seen patrolling. The clothes were the same as those worn by CP9 trainees before they'd proven themselves and were enlisted into the ranks; it'd been over ten years since Kaku had worn their like. People who thought Lucci was nothing but an overly strong brute had no idea. Behind the power in that body was a mind that could do even more damage, and which paid attention to the slightest detail. 

Once Kaku was dressed, he walked out into the compound where Lucci was waiting, and it started again. 

 

Kaku swung- missed _again_. He threw himself back to avoid a lazy retaliatory swipe. Then he surged forward. Tried to trap Lucci's arm but it was already crossed primly over its owner's chest, standing several feet away. Why couldn't Kaku _hit_ the man?! He hadn't lost that much of his strength. Surely not. Yet he'd been pretty much batting air from the beginning.

He saw Lucci flicker and vanish. Kaku teetered around in growing alarm, and then braced himself on instinct.

Lucci materialized right in front of him and punched him in the gut. Even with Tekkai, it felt like getting swiped by a battering ram. 

Kaku wobbled and collapsed, lungs paralyzed by the clinical blow to his solar plexus. Flashes of images as his brain fired messages of growing panic; pictures of a thug and a bodyguard rolling around in agony after Kaku had punched them like that. Kaku had the advantage of Tekkai, but then again, Lucci had hit him hard, and if Kaku's defenses had failed, his insides would now be his outsides. 

...Air...he needed...Kaku's fingers scrabbled in the dirt, mouth open wide but unable to breathe. 

"You're not the first agent to go native on a long mission, you know."

I wasn't _on_ a mission, Kaku inwardly growled as a trickle of oxygen finally made its way through. He turned his head and looked around, despite the pain wrenching his gut and burning his lungs. Lucci was crouched a few feet away, observing him. 

"It was pretty obvious as soon as I saw the place where you were living that we'd have a lot of work getting you back." It must be the buzz of passing oxygen deprivation, but that didn't seem to make any sense. Kaku was back now, had come home of his own volition, which didn't feel like the smartest thing he'd ever done right this second. "It was too soft, that city. Not to mention the life you'd chosen."

Kaku swallowed great gulps of air, getting to his knees and trying to stop the shaking in his limbs. 

"In a way, your infiltration was too successful. It would have been better for your fighting skills if you'd been on the run all that time. Or if you'd simply picked something a little less...comfortable. You like comfort, don't you. You like these things we do when we wear our masks. You like the roles we play a little too well, you always have, it's a weakness of yours."

"That is _not true_ ," Kaku snarled, shooting to his feet, a shower of kicked dust preceding a blow that finally connected. Lucci's Tekkai absorbed it, but his feet left tracks in the sandy courtyard as he was pushed back an inch. 

And then he disappeared again, and a purr in Kaku's ear said, "That's better, but you do remember that it is preferable not to lose your temper in a fight, right? That is definitely a weakness of yours."

...Kaku was ready to concede to that one.

The rest of the day was pretty painful.

 

He wondered things at night, as he fell over the threshold of sleep into unconsciousness. The half-formed questions were at the antipodes of plaguing him; they waited for him like static layers that his mind tumbled through on its way down, barely stopping, not considering an answer...What would he miss the most? What on earth would Elis, the agent who got him stunt gigs at the studio, say? He'd not said goodbye to Hao at the organic food deli. The old man would have to find someone else to sell his mango chutney to. What possible excuse could Yoshio use to explain his sudden disappearance, since 'Kaku went back to his home dimension' was not going to cut it...? He hoped Yoshio wouldn’t take as long to get over him as he took to get over Mike...Would he keep the little changes in personality he'd picked up with Kaku? And would the cat ever get over Lucci's visit...?

 

Kaku took the blow on his forearms with a grunt and then shot forward in a move he'd used successfully on Lucci back in the old days. Lucci's strength was unbelievable, but Kaku was just that bit more maneuverable. The blow connected, but didn't do much harm. Kaku fell back in the face of the retaliation, watching for any hint of an opening he could exploit. They were fighting without their Zoan powers. Kaku stubbornly refused to resort to his transformation until Lucci did. Which Lucci wasn't going to do since he didn't need it to beat Kaku to a pulp. It was probably for the best; Kaku's Zoan abilities had _really_ gone downhill. 

 

Lucci stepped back so that Kaku could pick himself up from the dirt. The small breathing space was a reward for a somewhat acceptable trade of blows, since Lucci had otherwise no qualms in kicking a man when he was down.

"Do you miss the good life yet?" Lucci asked him, watching Kaku get his balance back with some effort. On Lucci's shoulder, Hattori seemed to be laughing at him. Kaku wondered if he'd gotten concussed at some point in the past hour.

"Hell no, this is so much more fun." 

"I saw you shivering in your sleep last night," said Lucci. Kaku shivered now, at the thought of something so lethal near him while he was helpless. How did Lucci always drop off his rations without waking him? "You must miss your bed-warmer."

Kaku wiped his mouth and spat out the grit with a touch of defiance. "If you mean Yoshio, he was my lover."

"Don't you mean your cover?"

"What's wrong, Lucci, jealous?"

Lucci's face was unreadable, but Hattori suddenly rocketed from his shoulder, heading for shelter. That was the only warning Kaku got, and it wasn't enough. The knee connected full force with his abdomen. He bent over it helplessly. A choking cough splattered blood into the dirt.

"That was particularly lame." Lucci didn't sound amused. "If you're going to try to rile me into making a mistake, do try a little harder. As for your little toy back there, at least you had the good sense not to tell him anything more than that you came from another world."

Actually, thought Kaku, staring at the blood on the ground and feeling suddenly cold, he hadn't told Yoshio anything voluntarily, not until his friend had openly questioned his cover story.

He never even saw the next blow. 

Big black spots obscured his vision, but he could hear Lucci turn on his heels and walk away. "We'll continue this tomorrow. Your strength seems to be coming back - at a snail's pace - but your edge is about as cutting as Jyabura's wit."

Kaku's hands clenched into fists. After five minutes, he got slowly to his feet and headed towards the well to wash off. He didn't shiver at the touch of the glacial water tonight. He already felt much colder.

His body must have gotten somewhat used to the punishing effort, or else it had stopped caring. Sleep didn't engulf him that time, and left him staring at the ceiling instead, utterly motionless bar the faint movement of his chest. 

...Cover. Yes, Yoshio had been part of his cover from the start and had never ceased to be. Kaku had allowed himself to take the man as a lover, and he'd even thought of him as an ally at some point...The infiltrator had fooled everyone, including himself. He'd never given his 'ally' anything but the bare bones of the truth. He'd hidden the greatest part of himself and told Yoshio only what the latter could live with to keep the man's love and support. That didn't make Yoshio an ally or a lover, just a tool Kaku kept closer to his chest. 

He'd thought he was happy with Yoshio. He'd thought he was happy back there, in Otherworld. A part of him did honestly miss it, an aspect of himself he hadn't known existed until his days in Vancouver...but then again, so much of his persona and his feelings had been fake, part of his infiltration, that he couldn't be sure anymore. He really had fooled himself. Kept himself busy, merrily juggled the lives of Karl Crandall and a CP9 agent on a mission, staying grounded in the here and now...all to avoid looking at the bigger picture. Kaku had known on a plane of thought he did not allow himself to visit, that Otherworld did not have trans-dimensional portals. Their physicists had no knowledge of even their theory, and though Kaku knew they were possible, he wasn't smart enough to invent and implement a whole new branch of physics by himself before he died of old age.

What would have happened if Lucci hadn't shown up? Kaku would have had a meltdown a few years down the road as he finally had to face the fact he was never going back. Would he have been able to move on from there? That had been the heart of his fear, the question he'd never allowed himself to ask in all the time he'd been there. Because years ago, Kaku had accepted to sell his soul and drench his hands in blood for a purpose, and if he ever lost that purpose, then he would have nothing. He would be nothing. And there was nothing more terrifying than that. Maybe someone called Karl Crandall could have eventually picked up the pieces and made a new life for himself, a better life according to most standards...but there was no escaping who he really was, and Kaku suspected that in reality, he'd have ended up leaving Yoshio anyway to join the Foreign Legion or become a hired gun, a hollow man who killed because life no longer meant anything to him until someone put him down like a rabid dog.

But Lucci had come for him, and Kaku had returned without hesitation and was now getting the shit beaten out of him and making no efforts to escape it. He'd left it all - the small joys, the luxuries, the friendship, the choices he might have made, the freedom to explore another man he could have been - because he did not have the right to accept them. He'd never had. He'd made that choice long before now. 

An ache in his chest where no blow had landed...Yoshio. Poor guy. But then again, he wouldn't be the first of Kaku's victims and, assuming Lucci didn't kill him in the days to come, he'd probably not be the last. 

That assumption - that Lucci wouldn't kill him - was far from a given.

 

Lucci dodged, an honest-to-goodness dodge which meant he'd not been sure his Tekkai could have handled that Rankyaku without some repercussions. Bricks, gravel and soil crunched and rippled up in a straight line behind him like a field beneath some giant's plow. They were fighting in another part of the wrecked compound, finishing the job of totally trashing it. There'd been lines of curious guards on the walls the first day, but somebody must have chased them away, for discretion and for safety.

Kaku closed on his opponent before the geyser of debris could start on its downward trajectory, Soru taking him within striking range. A quick blow to the shoulder. If he could take a notch out of Lucci's punches-

_Feint!_

Kaku saw it coming this time, not that that helped him much. Lucci's graceful spin-kick hit him hard enough to hammer right past Tekkai and send him rocketing fifty feet away, crashing straight through a pillar and into the remains of a barracks on the way. 

...Kaku stared up at the sky, the roof of the building having fallen some time ago already. He was thinking of his old instructor's swords again, possibly on the heels of the dazed thought that if he had his own blades, he might have a chance. He remembered his instructor continuously caring for his weapons. But a sword shouldn't be polished daily like that if it wasn't used. Particles of oil and powder would accumulate in the grooves, in the microscopic edges of the blade. It should only be cleaned, edged and polished if it served regularly. A sword wasn't a sword when it was kept in a case, whether it tarnished or was kept to a uselessly pristine shine that dulled its true purpose. A sword was only a sword when it killed. 

A crunch of boots in the debris, a soft 'Coooo-roooo?'

"Do you want to stop?"

It must be evening, Kaku concluded; he'd thought for a minute his vision was growing dim. Lucci always asked him that question at the end of every single day. Do you want to stop? Do you want to call it quits? Do you want to give up? Kaku was convinced this was just another form of torture.

"Stop? Why stop, this is such a kick," he gasped in English, feeling the mark left by Lucci's boot on his abs. 

"If you have something to say, do so in a language we both understand."

"...got nothing to say."

"See you tomorrow then." Lucci turned on his heels and walked away. He slept somewhere else on the compound. Kaku didn't have the energy to figure out where. 

...He could have just said, yeah, I want to stop.

But he wasn't sure he could live with the consequences. To start with, he wasn't sure he would still live _as_ a consequence. Lucci's pride in CP9 was as fierce and uncompromising as his pride in his own abilities. A small but not insignificant number of recruits over the years had suffered for not being up to Lucci's standards. Usually Lucci did nothing more than stand by and let them pay for the consequences of their own failure, though he occasionally took a more direct approach if they'd been particularly incompetent. And there were times he relented, when he judged the candidate had enough promise where a bit of whipping into shape might be enough to do the trick. Kaku wasn't entirely sure of it, but he thought his life might nonetheless depend on remaining in that category. 

Sometimes the candidates quit by themselves, because CP9 agents were harsh instructors. Kaku had 'shaped up or shipped out' a couple of newbie agents himself over the years. Maybe not this roughly, Kaku told himself, wiping his mouth with a shaking hand and looking at the smear of half-dried blood. At least, he didn't think he'd been this much of a bastard.

Another minute and he'd gathered the strength and breath to stagger to his feet and limp his way to the ruined forge. He examined his body as he washed it off in the well water, looking for critical injuries rather than merely aching ones. It looked like he was going to live and fight another day. Lucci's blows were a scientific masterpiece: designed to hurt, to stress-test Tekkai to the max, yet not cripple. Oh yeah, the man was a real expert...

Kaku dropped the rag into the bucket and watched a swirl of blood dissolve in the water. Even if Lucci had been guaranteed not to kill him, he couldn't give up. He was not allowed to. He'd gone too far. Past assassinations, the friends he'd betrayed on Water 7, what he'd almost done to Yoshio, all stood like milestones on his chosen path of no return. He was not allowed to spare himself now. That was why he didn't hate Lucci for putting him through this. No, quite the contrary. If Lucci ended up killing him, he'd simply be snapping a sword that had been damaged beyond repair before it could break in battle and compromise what they fought for: peace, order, Justice. Kaku could actually understand that. Maybe that was the worst part of it all. He did understand. If the roles were reversed, he'd do the same. Every night, Lucci asked him if he wanted to stop. Every night, Kaku said no.

 

 

_This is a dream_ , thought Kaku, perfectly lucid. He was standing in some non-space that reminded him of the hole between the worlds. It was utterly dark and empty. Nothing but the sound of panicked footsteps from a source he couldn't pinpoint. 

As he waited, passive in his dream state, a faceless victim ran past him, fell, scrabbled in the nothingness that might have been the ground, got to his feet again and staggered on.

Dream. Kaku had had the same one a few times back in Vancouver. He knew this, but the knowledge meant nothing. Wake up, he ordered himself. But he couldn't. He watched, helpless, as the man stumbled- and stopped dead.

The killer had materialized in front of the escaped target and plunged his fingers into the man's chest. The man grunted and stared down at the hand sticking into his ribcage as if he was surprised it didn't hurt more. He would be dead very soon. 

With dreamlike slowness, Kaku's gaze went from the dying man to the killer, and the dreamworld shifted abruptly. It wasn't Lucci this time, as it had been in his previous nightmares. 

The killer pulled his cap down with the hand that was bloodied to the wrist. "Sorry," he said, and actually sounded like he meant it in a detached sort of way. "It's for a greater good."

"I've finished here," said a voice behind Kaku - Lucci's voice. Kaku smelled smoke. 

"All done on my end," his partner replied, rubbing a spot of blood from the sleeve of his tracksuit. 

This is a dream, thought Kaku.

Arms fastened around his waist. A whisper like velvet brushed his ear. "Let's extract. I think we deserve a bit of R&R after this one." The words made a promise that touched every inch of his skin.

Kaku looked down at the blood on his hand. "Sure," he said. Lucci pressed into his back, fingertips ran down his chest. Their clothes were already gone. Heat spread from where their bodies touched. There were no secrets between them, nothing held back, nothing _to_ hold back when it was all stripped down to bare bone. It was so pure it left him breathless. Kaku glanced down, unsurprised to find that the body on the ground, chest ripped open, was his own. It didn't matter. The weak might perish but Justice prevailed. 

Kaku ripped himself out of sleep with a shout, hand flying out in a gesture that started as a wild flail and ended in a cutting wash of air much like a flying Shigan. It shattered the stool and split the bricks behind it. In his peripheral vision, Kaku saw a shadow dart away. 

Lungs heaving, Kaku stared at the remains of the stool and the wall. The masonry made familiar crick-crick noises, until the weight of his gaze tipped the scale and the wall cracked and crumbled. A beam shifted and settled, sending dust cascading onto Kaku's camp bed, but nothing else fell down. 

Kaku finished the night wrapped in a blanket on one end of the bed, propped up by the wall, deep in...well, it was too jagged and primal to be called 'thought'. The next day, his food, drinking water and new clothes were out in the courtyard near the well. And the next day, and the next. Kaku felt at a deeply instinctual level that he'd done something positive - shown himself to be too dangerous to approach, perhaps - but his mind had become too pared down to care and he was in no way stupid enough to let himself get hopeful or distracted. 

 

Kaku stared at the piece of glass in his hand, the relic of a broken window. The way it played with the last glimmer of fading sunlight was hypnotic, like something he'd known once, but the parallel escaped him. 

He lifted it and sliced through the first lock of hair. A ginger curl floated to the debris littering the floor of the forge, followed by others. Stupid. Should have done this days ago. The sweat-plastered strands had escaped his cap and gotten into his eyes today when he whipped his head around. Nearly got him killed. He could have asked Lucci for some scissors rather than hack his way through, but his mind seemed set down iron tracks and he would be damned if he deviated enough to ask Lucci for anything, however minor. 

Darkness fell, but he continued to slice and cut by touch alone until he was done. 

 

Kaku spun at a speed beyond thought. He'd not actually had a single thought for the past hour, it was all instinct. Thinking through his moves would have seen him plastered to a nearby wall. Weave- dodge- feintspin _strike_ \- A thud. Connected. Lucci exhaled into the blow, a grunt of pain. Grabbed Kaku's arm- _move_ -

Tekkai! 

Face in the dirt once more. Kaku picked himself up and tried again.

 

He fought until the man he'd been back in Vancouver would have keeled over, and then he fought until he was fairly certain he was getting near his former shape- but he couldn't be sure, he couldn't _be sure_. And Lucci did not stop.

Until, on the tenth day - or possibly the eleventh or twelth, or hundredth - Kaku broke.

 

Blood ran from Lucci's lips and forehead, but Kaku had made a mistake on the follow-through and now-

Lucci hit him full-strength. The hand with a deathgrip on Kaku's shoulder kept him from tumbling out of range, and Lucci wound his fist back and did it again. Kaku held on to Tekkai for dear life, it kept the damage from seriously injuring him. It didn't stop it from hurting. He-

He couldn't do this.

Lucci was nearly twice his strength even when Kaku was at the top of his form. _He couldn't do this!_ If Lucci kept this up, it was going to kill him.

Kaku tore himself away from the grip, staggered back, but he couldn't get his stance right, he couldn't- His body was shaking. He needed- needed to-

Lucci watched, dispassionate. The sweat trickling down his neck could have belonged to somebody else. He'd taken off the jacket in the morning, and one arm of his shirt had been ripped to shreds by a glancing Ryankaku. There were bruises on his upper arm, near the tattoo. It swam in Kaku's vision. 

Then the killer took one step towards him, another. Kaku hunched over the pain, helpless as a bloodied fist drew back.

The weakened plea burst out on a gasp, hands flung out in surrender. "Lucci- no- _stop!_ " 

Lucci stopped immediately. The next blow didn't land, instead he caught Kaku's arm, steadying him as Kaku staggered and fell.

"Easy," Lucci grunted. "Breathe."

Kaku's knees hit the ground with a thump, and that was all the support he needed. He whipped around and put the kind of speeds he could once pull into a single Shigan aimed at Lucci's femoral artery. 

That he might have killed someone so close to him didn't cross his mind; maybe at that point he believed nothing he could do would ever kill Lucci, but this would sure keep the son of a bitch busy for a few days. What would have happened right after that blow had landed and the instant before Lucci had to deal with a serious hemorrhage was not something that Kaku had considered either. He'd reacted purely on instinct. Fight. Kill. Survive.

As it were, he wasn't going to have the opportunity of finding out exactly what Lucci would have had time to do before the blood loss got to him, because the blow had been blocked an inch from the inner seam of Lucci's pants, impact absorbed by Tekkai as well as strength and speed beyond imagining. 

"I'd call that a low blow," said Lucci after a heart-thudding two seconds. 

Kaku blinked, trying to catch up with events as he stared stupidly at his hand caught in the grip of steely fingers. 

"About time. I was wondering if you'd ever make it back." 

Kaku made a weak questioning noise. Lucci hoisted him to his feet by a handful of shirt, grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced Kaku to look him in the eye. His voice was steely with an undercurrent of urgency, the need to punch through and make every word count. 

"Don't ever regret that place, or him, or anything you found there. Don't ever doubt you made the right choice. That comes down to doubting who we are and what we do. Do you understand me, Kaku? We do not have the luxury of doubt. Doubt will kill you."

"And that'd be a pity," said Kaku's mouth without bothering with cerebral input, "when you're doing such a fine job of it."

A short silence and then Lucci laughed, a sound like glory and murder. He was still laughing when he crushed their bloodied mouths together. 

The first thought that crossed Kaku's mind was that he was going to live. And what's more, he finally knew - deep down in his bones - _why_ he was going to live, and for what. He finally remembered it all. And now he was going to do what he did best, which was live to fight another day, and rip the most out of life while he could. 

The thought rushed through his body like an electric current, temporarily overriding even the pain. It was hot and fiery as it wrapped around the fingers digging into Lucci's arms, and it coiled down his back and into his loins. It was the natural response to a reprieve, to a battle won. The body wanted to enjoy to the fullest the life it had fought to save, and damn the consequences.

The kiss grew fierce, demanding. Kaku's hands fastened on muscles like steel, on Lucci's skin, on the body he'd been trying to fill full of holes for the past number of days. Lucci's fingers were anchored in Kaku's hair, exerting some control on the wild thing that had burst into life between them. The savage, desperate kiss dissolved in a gasp when Lucci ground into him, throwing their bodies into the mix as well, and it was just like old times again.

He'd wondered if Lucci would want to go back to their one-time relationship once Kaku had managed to prove himself. Kaku himself hadn't been sure where he stood on that point. He'd barely left Yoshio, and falling back into Lucci's bed as if nothing had happened felt disloyal to them both. But Yoshio had been left behind, Kaku couldn't hurt him any more, while the man who'd cared for Yoshio had been killed in this compound, if he ever truly existed at all. And Lucci? Lucci obviously didn't give a damn. He knew he wasn't anywhere near the same plane as Yoshio. He knew he could touch something in Kaku that nobody else could. Lucci had no competition.

And then that bastard _stopped_! A hand on Kaku's shoulder put a couple of inches of space between them, and the fingers still locked in Kaku's hair held his head away from pursuing that mind-melting kiss. "Hold it," Lucci murmured, words brushing against Kaku's mouth. "We'll pick this up again tomorrow. I don't think you're up to it now."

"Huh? Why?" Kaku ground out, once he'd managed to make sense of the words. He was up for it - painfully so in fact, his body aching for this hard enough to temporarily blot out the other injuries. His brain's wiring had probably been jarred askew yet it seemed perfectly rational to him that if he didn't use the life burning in him to get laid in _the next five seconds_ then he was undoubtedly going to die, possibly of spontaneous combustion. 

"Tch, you wonder why? Your stamina levels are dangerously low, fighting all out for ten days without holding back." Lucci's voice was a rough caress with no condemnation. Kaku shuddered, knowing very well Lucci was right, but the truth of his words was being acknowledged in a part of Kaku's brain which was somewhere else right now, picking daisies. The desires goading him on had no care for stamina levels. "No- come on, you idiot herbivore, you can barely stand."

"We don't have to do it standing. That's what beds are for."

Lucci snorted. "Go wash off and crash for twenty four hours, you'll enjoy it more. Kaku- enough." With a twist he detached Kaku's hands, which hadn't been listening to him either, from the buttons they were undoing 

Kaku broke off with a hangdog expression, fingers resting obediently on the dark material covering Lucci's chest. "I- I'm sorry."

Lucci shrugged acceptance of that apology. "I like your enthusiasm, but it'd be-"

"I should have realized."

"Forget it."

"Ten days of fighting. And you're not that young anymore."

Lucci caught on immediately. He didn't dignify that with an answer, but his narrowed eyes said 'watch it'. 

Kaku went right on in the same considerate tones. "I guess you're feeling pretty tired. Stamina levels, yes, I understand."

Lucci gripped Kaku's wrists, about to push him away and walk off in contempt. Kaku gripped the shirt hard and added, "You're thirty now, right? And you've suffered injuries in your life- yeah, I can see where that'd have some impact on a man's performance in the sack, but you know, that's nothing you should feel embarrassed about, I hear it can happen to anybody."

Lucci stared at him, mouth slightly ajar for a short but memorable moment. Then he smiled. It was predatory but with an underlying grudging appreciation. "You live dangerously, do you know that?" 

"It's who I am," said Kaku as they bore each other down to the hard ground in a move like an echo of a life-and-death battle.

 

Kaku woke up in stages, all of them painful. He tried to throw off the coverlet that was grinding down on him as if it was lined with lead. His body did nothing more than twitch and subside. 

...I think I overdid it, thought Kaku, as memory started to trickle back. The insane days of fighting, only a nighttime away yet they'd already taken on the quality of past nightmares. He remembered trying to kill Lucci yesterday, and how Lucci had found that to be very promising. He remembered what Lucci had told him; it was engraved in his mind like the words on a door that had finally reopened. He remembered the kiss-

He remembered the next bit vividly too. The bit where Lucci had in essence told him to cool down and get some rest, and how Kaku had refused to take that wise advice and had instead felt him up and cast aspersions on Lucci's resilience and on his-...Kaku screwed his eyes shut and would have buried his face in the pillow had he been capable of moving. Lucci was a cold, calculating bastard with piles of restraint, but no male of the species liked that kind of disparagement. Pushing that particular button had gotten Kaku what he'd asked for, and then some. In hindsight, he was lucky to be alive.

Flashes of last night kept interfering with his attempt to panic at his immobility. Lucci grinding into him, biting- the fall of his hair as he leaned over his prey- a smirk as Kaku bit right back...pleasure stacked on lust and need until it crested way too soon, but it'd still been...pretty...damn...good...Though not good enough to justify crawling everywhere on all fours for the rest of his life. 

He wasn't permanently injured as such, he could tell from a quick inward look. But he'd used Rokushiki too much, gotten hit a few too many times, made too many demands on his stamina, and his body had decided that enough was enough and had cut all the utilities until the bills were paid in full. 

Kaku turned his attention from his body to its surroundings. They were in Lucci's hideout in the ruins. Kaku remembered getting there - stark naked if memory served - to finish what they'd started in the courtyard. It was better appointed than Kaku's forge. It had a proper bed, a table, and all its walls, though the glass in the single wide window was broken. Hattori dozed on the door of a weatherworn wardrobe hanging off its hinges. The bird's master was a warm dip in the mattress at Kaku's side. From the cadence of his breathing, Lucci was waking up. Good. Kaku could use some help.

The shape at Kaku's side shifted, stretched.

"Lucci." It came out as a croak. "There's something wrong. I- I can't move."

"I should bloody well hope so," Lucci grumbled, sitting up and swinging his feet off the bed. "Your resilience and single-mindedness are laudable, but they can sure be a pain to break through." His movements were stiff as he reached up to rub at one shoulder. That he made no attempt to hide it meant as much as the roll in the sheets last night. Kaku was no longer an outsider, a potentially compromised agent. He was back in the fold. 

"Um, Lucci? Help?"

"Yes, yes," said Lucci testily, reaching for a robe hanging from a nearby chair. It slipped over a back covered in sleek muscles and a few bruises. "Go back to sleep, you've only had a few hours. That will help."

"Sleep? I'm paralyzed, I might have permanent damage, and you think I can just nod off?" Kaku bit back, irritated. 

Lucci glanced back at him from the door and grinned cruelly. "You could if you tried, but I think you'll pass out first." 

Kaku glared at the closed door, though he seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes- 

\- and then Lucci was shaking him awake, and the fall of light through the paneless window informed him he'd been sleeping for well over two hours.

Kaku could do more than twitch now, but walking was still nothing more than a distant hope. Lucci gave him a 'how bloody useless' look, wrapped a blanket around Kaku's shoulders and helped him to his feet, one of Kaku's arms slung over his shoulder. Kaku concentrated on hobbling and not swearing as muscles spasmed. He looked around only when they were halfway across a small garden gone to grass.

"Where we going?"

"I ordered the grunts to drop off some decent food. I also got a hot bath ready for us. The compound had some large tubs and steam rooms for the officers, and since it was off to the side, it was left mostly intact by the battle and the explosion. Maybe you'll be able to move afterwards."

"Food?" Kaku said hoarsely. "Bath?"

"Yes."

Kaku could feel a feverish energy return to his body at the promise alone. "It's what I've always said, Lucci. All those people who think you're a heartless creep just don't know you very well."

"I'm a professional," said Lucci with that feline smile of his, "so flattery will get you nowhere."

Kaku limped around a corner of what proved to be a dusty bathhouse, half his weight on Lucci's shoulder but mouth still running fine. "Ah, you may be a professional and you put up a good front, but I bet you're glad I'm back."

"Yes, I am," Lucci admitted, the straightforward answer utterly flooring Kaku. "You’re strong, reliable, and we function well as a team. CP9 gains much from that. Besides, the only other one of my acquaintances who'd be able and willing to fight me for ten days straight and still try to kill me at the end is Jyabura, and he's an idiot."

Kaku laughed, unable to stop even when it became painful until Lucci dumped him into the filled tub.

 

The rest of the day was spent eating, sleeping, taping up sprains and a dislocated shoulder that Kaku had put back himself three days ago and which wasn't doing as well as he hoped, and sleeping some more. Gratifyingly, Lucci was doing pretty much the same thing, though with what he probably considered to be less desperation and a bit more style and grace. 

Kaku woke at five in the morning to hear Lucci talking softly from another room. They'd been so isolated these past days that it seemed almost odd for Lucci to be addressing someone else. From the tone of the response, the other person involved in this conversation was a den den mushi. A click, and then Lucci went out. The front door closed at the same time as Kaku's eyelids.

An hour later, Lucci disrespectfully toed Kaku's butt beneath the sheet and suggested he stop lazing around or he was going to lose whatever shape he'd managed to recapture.

"Good morning, Lucci," said Kaku, putting as much cheerful venom in it as he could. Ahh, it was just like old days. 

A package of soft material landed on his head. "Get up, get dressed. We have a job to do."

"A _job?_ "

"Yes. Don't worry, it will be easy enough for a weakened convalescent to manage."

"I'll give you weakened," Kaku muttered, sitting up and scrubbing at his hair. "What kind of job?"

"The director will give us the specifics."

"We're going to Enies Lobby?"

"No. He's here. They all are."

Kaku blinked at him in the morning sunlight.

Lucci tilted his head towards the nearby walls. "Didn't you notice the inner compound had been rebuilt? This is the gateway to a brand new world. Vegapunk is here, a lot of scientific minds with him, some very expensive and potentially dangerous equipment...In the past year, more and more Marines and government staff have congregated here. There's an even larger sprawl of new buildings on the far side, where there aren't all these debris to clear away. The Tower of Justice was slow in being rebuilt. Too many people knew our home address by then anyway, and that's hardly acceptable for a secret organization. When our Director learned that you hadn't died but were on the other side and giving him one hell of a stake in this new venture, he just moved us here. We've been operating out of this place for the past six months."

"Oh." So much time had elapsed. So much was different. "Hey, you mentioned back in Vancouver that the political situation had changed, what-"

"Later. We'll have several days of traveling to get to where we’re going. I'll fill you in." Lucci was already at the door. He was wearing a jacket, a hat, Hattori on his shoulder...Suddenly it was like no time had elapsed at all. "I'm going to go and convince the guards at the exit to the quarantine area that we're not plague carriers. They won't insist on keeping us here forty days. Not with a bit of persuasion. Get dressed and meet me at the exit in fifteen minutes."

"Roger."

In the silence that fell once he was gone, Kaku got up, pleased to note that he could move around normally, if stiffly. He used the small bathroom next door. The water wasn't running, Lucci had filled a copper basin to bathe in and to flush the toilet when needed. Kaku examined himself in the cracked and dusty mirror set against the tiles. Rokushiki users had enormous recuperative abilities. He didn't look like a total road accident victim today. Though he sure had done a number on his hair...Had he really hacked at it with a piece of broken glass? He could have sworn that was another nightmare, but from the looks of it, he'd either used that or a lawnmower. 

Kaku tilted his head, examined a bruise that ran down his temple to his jaw, swelling the skin over one eye...and something he'd subconsciously noted on his way into the room prodded him suddenly. He twisted around and searched the dim corners of the bathroom. Yes, his cap had been dumped there, the one he'd taken back with him from Vancouver. He'd sneaked it out of the infirmary when the rest of his Otherworld clothes had been confiscated. He'd worn it all this time. Lucci, who knew there were some lines that should not be crossed, hadn't taken it from him. 

It'd been dropped in a pile of shredded clothes, a bedspread and other sundries that Lucci must have recuperated yesterday from the forge. The ground's keepers were probably going to burn them all. Kaku picked up the cap and went back to the mirror, rubbing at a spot of blood on the band. He fitted it on, tilting it so that it shaded the bruise. Then he took it off and looked at the logo. He remembered shopping for this with Yoshio when someone had stolen his old black cap at the gym. Yoshio had half-heartedly tried to persuade him to buy a Canucks cap, this being Vancouver, but Kaku had picked the Mighty Ducks one because he thought it was funny. Maybe he should have gone local color, but at the time, in a city that rich with variety, a tiny individualistic streak would go unnoticed. The synthetic colors were bright in the gloom of the bathroom lit only by a couple of holes in the ceiling. Kaku brushed his finger over the fierce duck.

They'd need him over there again...The powers that be were planning to establish connections with Otherworld once they'd studied the info he'd given them. CP9 might try to block him from going, but if someone of Vegapunk's stature insisted, they'd have to cave, and who else could lead a delegation to the right people and translate for them? It was a given he'd be going back.

Yes. But he'd be going back as a CP9 agent. He had to know who he was. _Doubt will kill you_. Kaku wasn't a cruel man, and he did not believe he was a bad one, but there was something hard and sharp inside him, something intransigent and dangerous and pure like a steel blade. He'd dedicated it entirely to Justice, since it was better than having it cut randomly, and perhaps that one single choice might seem limiting to people who'd been spoilled with choices all their lives, but for Kaku, it was the only way, and he truly would not have it otherwise. 

The cap landed back in the refuse. Kaku tore off the tee and light pants that Lucci had given him yesterday, and dropped them in the pile as well, and headed back, naked, to the bedroom, the only thing going through his mind the distant hope that this time Lucci had remembered underwear. He unrolled the bundle of clothes and smiled with pleasure. It was a tracksuit. Well, well, that was a surprise, considering all the griping Lucci had done in the past about Kaku's abominable lack of style...Kaku had never cottoned on to suits and ties. The clothes felt like a memory as he pulled them on, an old, comfortable sense of belonging. And a cap had tumbled from the bundle. Black, of course. Oh yes, beneath his I'll-spend-ten-days-nearly-killing-you tough guy exterior, Lucci was an old softie at heart, and Kaku would be certain to remind him of this once he'd fully recuperated his ability to dodge.

The large gates out of the wrecked part of the compound were open. Lucci leaned against the thick stone lintel, and looked up as Kaku ambled into the shadow cast by the fortress walls. His eyes rested on what he saw with an air of approval, though true to form, all he said was, "About time. You made me wait. Am I going to have to beat punctuality back into you as well?" 

Kaku joined him at the door, hands in his pockets. "Hopefully not. What's the rush, anyway? There are no trains leaving from this island, so we'll have to wait for the evening tide to sail."

"Yes, but the others want to see you. They've been giddy as schoolgirls for days now, hanging around on communication channels better reserved for official business, only to badger me into letting you out, or letting them in, or at least let you come to the den den mushi." Lucci looked disdainful for the record, but Kaku didn't try to hide his pleased grin. "More importantly, the director wants to see us over breakfast to welcome you back into the fold, gloat over the new leverage you've given him with Mariejoie, and then give us our official orders. We're to start the mission 'right away' after that. He didn't bother checking the timetables before tossing that out." 

"I see the government's still the same. Hurry up and wait is always the order of the day."

"Some things never change...but we'll leave taxes to the taxman," said Lucci with a sensual smile as he turned towards the door. "Let's get moving."

Kaku fell in at his side. No time to waste. They had a job to do.


End file.
